Every day we interact with thousands of man-made objects and processes.

This interaction fires off with the sound of an alarm ringing on your phone in the morning. Jumping out of bed, grabbing your toothbrush and hopping into the shower. Fiddling with the coffee maker, unloading the dishwasher, and waking up the kids, whilst making sure the eggs spend exactly four and a half minutes in the boiling water and not a second longer. Shaking your hands energetically over the toaster to prevent it from setting off the fire alarm. A quick but nutritious breakfast. Stuffing plates into the now-empty dishwasher. Dressing up. Kissing goodbyes. Locking the door. A hurried stroll down the side road and onto the main street. Navigating a sophisticated network of turnstiles, escalators, corridors, and platforms, to board the train that takes us to our place of work.

9AM. Laptops, spreadsheets, meeting rooms, and vending machines. Or: pens, notepads, A4 folders, and storage cabinets. Or, maybe, check-in registers, hi-vises, forklifts, and sharing snacks in a tight warehouse kitchen. Over and over and over.

Fast forward to 5PM. Exhale. See-you-tomorrows, an unbuttoned collar, and a noticeably slower stroll to the train station. Checking on Facebook feed on the way back. Beeping milk and eggs through the corner shop’s self-checkout counter. A physically healthy dinner. A mentally unhealthy Netflix. A tightly packed dishwasher, a glass of red, and a long-awaited bedtime book.

Each of those numerous objects and processes that we experience during our day – the shower and the toaster, the crowded main street and the Tube, the check-in register and the work laptop, the Facebook app and the self-checkout machines at the corner shop, and hundreds and thousands of others, on top of serving their direct purpose, make us feel different emotions.

Some of them we enjoy using. The one-click coffee maker fits nicely around our chaotic morning routine. The new Oxfords are fantastically comfy and make us look incredibly smart. The phone, although a few years old, is still a reliable friend, working smoothly and holding charge well.

With the others we are not as happy. The shower that is taking a good minute to warm up. The ever-lasting battle between the toaster and the fire alarm. The daily gamble at Earl’s Court, where you never know which platform your train is going to arrive at.

Each of those little frictions cuts off a tiny chunk of our energy. As our day progresses, the quarks of dissatisfaction accumulate and may quite noticeably affect how we feel. We become angry, irritable, and tired. Our willpower wears off. We start procrastinating and looking for shortcuts. Our unexcited mood leads to further little trip-ups, making our frustration snowball.

Just imagine, what if all those “not as happy” encounters weren’t there? What if the shower was ready when we are, the fire alarm wasn’t jealous of our beans on toast, and the trains always arrived at the same platform, at the same time? How easier, happier, and more fulfilled would our day be?

Thing is, it could. A lot of things that upset, irritate, or baffle us do so because, well, they weren’t designed to please at first place. The person or company that built them did a great job in solving a technical or organisational challenge, but they didn’t pay as much attention to the other façade of the product: the self-imposed promise to deliver the solution in the form that the user is willing to absorb. If made right, all those things, at least in theory, could provide experience just as perfect as the objects that we enjoy using do, without leaving the unrepairable imprint on our happiness level.

What is so special about the things that we are truly happy with? It’s this one thing: they make serving us well their core mission. They do something more than just solve a problem, eliminate an obstacle, or boost our productivity. They build around our life instead of forcing us into building our life around them. They respect our values and our lifestyle. Instead of punishing us for our flaws, they accept them and adjust without saying a word.

So let’s start with identifying the pieces that constitute a well-designed object or process (it makes sense to treat objects and processes in the same way, as both are effectively the same thing, with the only difference between them being the physical nature of the object versus the amorphic nature of the process). What features would we expect from something that we could truly feel as part of our life?

It solves a problem. Every object that we use has a purpose. A well-designed object focuses on a problem someone is uncomfortable with and provides a solution for it. An object created without a tangible problem behind it is useless, waste of resources, and effort exercised in vain.

It solves the right problem. A well-designed object gets to the bottom of the problem. Often, the problem is not about what is visible on the surface. It may take effort to identify the root cause. Efficient designs do just that, bringing up solutions that strike right at the core of the problem, instead of working it around, cutting it short, or offering crutches.

It is safe. Obviously, a well-designed object does not pose a threat to its user or anyone else.

It is easy to use. An efficient object doesn’t waste time and energy of its users. In fact, it is a lot more than just easy to use: truly efficient designs blend into our life seamlessly and invisibly.

It is visually or emotionally appealing. It is hard to call something well-designed if you look at it with disgust, ridicule, or fear. Neutrally looking objects work too (IKEA are superbly great at those), but when it comes to pleasant looks you can’t have too much.

It is perceivable. We can understand well-designed objects on almost innate level. They feel familiar. We feel connection with them. Predictable and unambiguous, we are confident that we know exactly what to expect from different actions that we take on them.

It is conscious about its involvement in our life. It can be invisible, barely noticeable, attention-grabbing, or right away intrusive, but always to the appropriate extent. It maintains the perfect level of intrusiveness by taking the back seat, patting on your shoulder, or shouting in your face, basing on the context.

It helps you use it right. If need be, it walks you through the process by the hand, adjusting to your pace and capabilities. It works hard to prevent you from making mistakes, but if they do happen, it helps you recover and never puts a blame on you.

It is resilient and robust. It can withstand a reasonable level of excessive force. Occasionally we drop objects, try to use them as a substitute for something else, or bend them slightly harder in some other way. We don’t expect a paper cup to withstand a dishwasher cycle, but surviving a few refills through a two-hour gym session would be reasonable to expect.

It is quite unlikely to malfunction, but when it malfunctions or breaks, it does so with minimal damage. A well-designed object has high quality designed-in, and it stands by it.

It is cost-efficient to make and maintain – and when time comes, to retire, recycle, and replace. Time, scope, and cost are strategic constraints, just as quality is, and good designs respect them.

It integrates nicely with its environment. It does not go against the indisputable forces of nature: it leverages them instead of trying to suppress them. In a way, it extends the nature by adding new value to the nature.

It assumes that there’s someone who owns it and the value it generates – whether it is its maker, user, installer, or maintainer. Disowned objects deteriorate faster, live less, and quickly turn into burden.

It is honest and sensible. It balances its ins and outs. It does not generate technical debt or relay pressure unfairly onto a different system. It does not cheat. It does not manipulate. It does not abuse nature or other systems, nor does it rely on shady practices, like Ponzi schemes, paying below minimal wage, or click-baiting.

It abides by law and all regulations applicable to it.

That’s quite a few boxes to tick, but that is what distinguishes objects that give from those that take.

There are way too many things in our life that, through deficiencies in their design, make us less happy than we could be. As we will show in further chapters, simple and avoidable design mistakes in objects like coffee makers, shopping apps, or vending machines can sometimes turn our day or even life upside down. And just the opposite, thought-through, carefully designed, purposeful objects can make all the difference in making our days brighter, our lives happier, and ourselves, content.

Being mindful of SEQUENCE principles facilitates creation of objects that satisfy these conditions. These principles extend far beyond the value that the object is meant to provide to its users. Packaging of the object, sustainability of its manufacturing process and its alignment with the operating environment, and robust quality approach all matter when you are looking to create an object that is not only to change the life of its users for the better, but also to make a positive, long-term contribution to the world we live in and your company’s balance sheet.