Things That Make Us Smart
"What is wrong is the design of the technology that requires people to behave in machine-centered ways, ways for which people are not well suited" - Don Norman
I've been reading a book by Don Norman: "Things That Make us Smart" (he also wrote "The Design of Everyday Things," a brilliant bit of prose on the considerations of design and usability that every aspiring interface designer should read). His premise is relatively straightforward: technology enables us to expand upon our base cognitive abilities, to make us "smart," but in the age of the machine, people are perceived as lacking in ability when compared to the very tools we use to extend our base capabilities. In approaching design processes from a machine-centered perspective, we tend to judge people against a warped set of expected capabilities and find them wanting. One facet of Norman's argument, then, is that a change in collective mindset needs to occur to anticipate the humanity in our everyday thinking; seeing human abilities for what they are suited best for, and utilizing technology to extend and complement those abilities.
A few things he said in the beginning struck me as quite lucid:
- "Today we serve technology. We need to reverse the machine-centered point of view and turn it into a person-centered point of view. Technology should serve us" (xi).
- "What is wrong is the design of the technology that requires people to behave in machine-centered ways, ways for which people are not well suited" (11).