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Where do you plug in the mouse?
This picture shows two round connectors
on the back of a computer.
One of the connectors is for a mouse and the
other is for a keyboard. The connectors look exactly the
same.
Below the connectors are two labels, a green mouse
label and a red keyboard label, but it is not clear
into which of the
connectors to plug the mouse or keyboard.
See arrows.
Does the green mouse label go with the lower
connector? Or with the upper connector?
If you guessed the lower connector goes with the green mouse label, you are wrong, but not alone in making this error. There is a tendency to plug the mouse into the lower connector! This may be because the lower connector is closer to the green mouse label. Or it may be that the positions of the connectors are seen as a "mirror reflection" of the positions of the corresponding label.
Readers' commentI just had to send you an e-mail to say, "AWESOME CATCH". I know what computer this is just by looking at it from the back; its a Compaq. I encounter this problem CONSTANTLY when I move my computer around at work or try to install a new one. This is obviously a "mapping" problem since the labels are not clearly "mapped" to the correct connectors. The color coding idea for the connectors is perhaps the best solution since DELL does this with their connectors and I never have a problem with installing a keyboard and mouse on a DELL PC.
D
Design suggestion
Since the location of the labels does not clearly
identify the connectors, one solution would be to
put the labels next to the corresponding connectors as
shown in photo A.
Another solution would be to use color
coding to associate
the connectors with the labels. See photo B.
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Copyright © Michael J. Darnell 2000-2010. All rights reserved.
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