I find myself wondering at their simplistic design while carrying such an important and complex function. A small, thin, rectangular piece of plastic with a few punched out words and sequences of numbers, a magnetic strip and, increasingly, a small almost square chip embedded within their upper surface layer. It seems like such an incredible feat of design that they provide such functionality and carry such a large amount of information while remaining such an unobtrusive object so easily carried by so many people.Yet it would seem I’m not quite so easily won over. I look at these plastic wonders and think “what a poor design this is… how have they managed to continue to be used for so long without making any attempt to improve their usability?” so it seems only reasonable that I lay out my primary concern for your consideration and, with a little bit of luck, to get you thinking just that little bit more about how the design of an everyday object affects how you use it.

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