Book Response #3: Design of Everyday Things - Chapters 2, 3, 4

The Design of Everyday Things
      By: Donald A. Norman

Response to Chapter 2:

      In this chapter, Norman first discusses how people typically blame themselves when making errors which results in a repeating cycle of inability to avoid error.  These errors often arise from misinterpreting actions throughout everyday life, either as a result of learned assumptions or through incorrect conceptual models built on observations of a poor system image.  He goes on to mention that human always have to justify their actions, and that it usually leads to blaming something other than ourselves for the occurring error.  This reinforces the feeling of helplessness in users that are unable to correct their construed mental model, leading to further failure.  I really enjoyed the way he depicted the slippery slope of helplessness because often times I feel desperately helpless after making the same stupid mistake over and over.  He goes on to break down exactly how people analyze their actions, noting seven precise steps, though I agree with him that typically steps are skipped when they shouldn't be.  Unfortunately he gives the impression that it is quite trivial to span the gulf of execution and evaluation when I personally believe that these can also be attributed to user incompetence.  Why does a user need a light to know if a tape has been inserted into the VCR when they can just lift the flap and check?  This boarders on the line of added complexity with little benefit to the general user.

Response to Chapter 3:

     What I gathered from this chapter is that the precision of human actions do not solely depend on the knowledge stored in the head of that person doing the action.  Typically, for routine tasks, I do them without even thinking about them, but I always had the belief that the knowledge was in my subconscious.  I rationalized that even though I wasn't actively thinking of what I was doing while I was doing it, there was always some little spot hidden away in my brain that told me "I've seen this happen like that before, so doing this should lead to that", but I felt it was more a reference book on how to do things I've done before (like looking up a word in a dictionary), and didn't view it as though my brain had a list of guidelines gathered over the years that led me reason and deduce new actions (like creating a grammatically correct sentence vs. just stringing words together from the dictionary).  Norman obviously spends a lot of time doing Introspection, and over the past year or two I have thought considerably more about how my thoughts are constructed.  I find the four reasons that precise knowledge is not needed is very important for designers to consider.  In addition, I really liked the way Norman broke down the way memories are kept into arbitrary things (rote memorization), meaningful relationships (grouping), and explanations (derived).  I find that I typically try to fully understand something while trying to memorize it, therefore when I have to recall the fact I can explain the reasoning behind it.  I do this because my ability to memorize random things is very poor!

Response to Chapter 4:

     I really enjoyed reading this chapter because it brought to my attention the reasoning behind actions, especially in social situations.  Although most people wouldn't see the correlation immediately, I feel like I try to approach social situations in the same manner I would approach a piece of machinery.  Also, when trying to learn how new things are supposed to work, I find myself highly interested in the constraints and often have found myself telling friends that I prefer to learn things by 'shading in the grey areas'.  This means that I try to identify what the object in question can and cannot be used for in a general sense.  This is probably why in class I typically ask questions that progress the discussion instead of having the professor repeat himself.  If the professor's reply, a new constraint, goes against what I previously understood, I try to clarify instead of just accepting the reply as fact.  Once, in 7th grade I accidentally made my Math Teacher leave the room from embarrassment because she kept saying a negative number times a negative number results in a negative number, which just isn't true.  I kept arguing that it was a positive number, oblivious to her visible feedback that she wanted to move onto the next question.  In regards to the doors and switches, often I pull instead of push or vice versa but I don't even think about the mistake, and move on, but I often have no issues with switches because I explore them in a very systematic manner.