The Design of Future Things - Ch 1

The Design of Future Things

Donald A. Norman

Summary

The book discusses smart technology and the interaction between human beings and machines. The first chapter starts by explaining how there is no real communication between machines and us, essentially because they can’t really understand our needs to the fullest. The problem is that technology is becoming more and more powerful, and non-meaningful collaboration between humans and machines could lead to serious problems. In today’s world, intelligent technology is really limited and incomparable to human decisions. However, it is easy to blame a person for a machine’s bad decision: “he should have done this” “she should have known that”, etc. However, we must start designing for the way people actually behave, and not the way we would like them to behave. Intelligent machines should be easy to use and understand, and they should be tailored to the way humans interact and move about society. When using a machine the interaction should be natural and obvious. We need a partnership with intelligent machines, not a one-way relationship in which someone (or something) is always in control. The chapter ended by explaining that we face many problems with technology that cannot be overcome easily. “We need augmentation, not automation”

Discussion

I read “The Design of Everyday Things”, a book by the same author, about a year ago and I literally couldn’t stop thinking about design for a long time. This book has a different focus but is similar in many aspects and as interesting. Everything, from doors to cars that can drive themselves, should be design to be obvious. Humans tend to get very frustrated with machines, basically because they are hard to figure out and their decisions are sometimes unpredictable and hard to understand. A simple example: signs that say “Pull” in a door should not exist, it should be obvious that you have to pull the door in order to open it by just looking at it and the way it is designed. The same goes for any type of technology, we shouldn’t need to take a course or have special talents to use a machine. I think the point that Mr. Norman is trying to make in the first chapter is that we must realize that as technology becomes more intelligent we also need to be more intelligent about its design. Although I have only read the first chapter of this book I am really looking forward to the next chapters.