The Design of Future Things - Ch 2

The Design of Future Things

Donald A. Norman

Summary

Chapter2 is about The Psychology of People & Machines. It starts by explaining how the new kinds of intelligent machines create their own assessments and make their own decisions. However, everyday people generally have problems interacting with these machines, as they don’t understand the logic behind it. Designers seem to believe that many of these devices are so intelligent that no learning is required, the book calls this “automagical”, referring to automatic plus magical. However, we all know that machines are not perfect or completely reliable; for this reason, regular people would like to understand the decisions and reactions of machines in order to accept them better.

It is obvious that machines hardware is very different from human beings. However, the book explains how both machines and humans must function effectively, reliably, and safely in the real world, so the world imposes the same demands and requirement upon all creatures. This is why it later explains how the future of everyday things lies in products that know where they are located and who their owners are and that can communicate with other products and the environment. Today, systems are responsive, but not intelligent. They often fail, mainly because they don’t have a good sensorimotor system, but also because they usually measure different things from people, and have different goals. The chapter finishes by explaining that the fundamental restriction on people’s successful interactions with machines is the lack of common ground between them.

Discussion

I think is really interesting how the book describes the fundamental restriction as being the lack of common ground between machines and us. I have never really though about it that way. I still look at most machines as some sort of dumb objects that make lots of mistakes and make me angry. As the book explains, they are definitely useful but not really intelligent. However, if we could have a common ground with them, as other machines do with themselves, we could reach a different sort of understanding, one that can lead to intelligent interaction with a machine. I would love to know in what actionable way are people trying to do this. Everything the book says makes total sense to me, but are we actually moving towards that direction?