Comments
Summary:
The Design of Future Things introduces design ideas that should be kept in mind when designing novel technologies that people are not currently familiar with. The two main illustrations used are automobiles, that either somewhat take over driving or fully take over driving, or smart homes. The smart homes described monitor your living habits around the house and either make suggestions on what you do (e.g. tell you what to eat) or predict what you want to do and take the necessary actions to make that possible (e.g. turn on lights and music when you walk into a room).
Norman has a summary of Design Rules at the end of the book that pretty much summarize the book into a few lines:
Design Rules for Human Designers of "Smart" Machines:
1. Provide rich, complex, and natural signals.
2. Be predictable.
3. Provide good conceptual models.
4. Make the output understandable.
5. Provide continual awareness without annoyance.
6. Exploit natural mappings.
Design Rules Developed by Machines to Improve Their Interactions with People:
1. Keep things simple.
2. Give people a conceptual model.
3. Give reasons.
4. Make people think they are in control.
5. Continually reassure.
6. Never label human behavior as "error."
Discussion:
Even though it was not the focus of the book, my favorite parts were when the author discussed current research projects and the technologies that were being produced. I was not very interested in their design as much as I was just interested in what they can do. I think that will be the way most people will approach these future technologies. They will not consciously care about the design, only how cool or useful the product is portrayed by ads. If the design is poor, the products will be frustrating to use, but if they are a novel product, they will still be purchased nonetheless. Most of the time, design will only become a factor when two similar products are released and their utilities are the same. Then, when a good design is what gives a product its advantage over its competition, is when design will be given priority.
Yea, I thought some of the stuff he talked about was pretty cool too. Not the design factor, but just the functionality and potential that those technologies had. And I agree on how the design will affect a product in some areas, if there are no real competitors, I think most consumers will be fairly forgiving, granted the fact that the product does its job reasonable and isn't an overly horrible design.
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