The Design of Future Things, Chapter 1

Reference Information
The Design of Future Things, Chapter 1
Donald A. Norman
Basic Books, New York, 2009


Summary
The first chapter focuses upon machine-human interaction and the difficulties that it faces. The author says that the main problem between humans and machines is lack of understanding, on both sides. He likens this to two monologues, where the machine and person are both issuing their commands but without true interaction and understanding. This leads to frustrating and dangerous situations because the user may not understand how or why the machine is acting the way it is since communication between them is so ineffectual.

Norman believes that a symbiotic relationship between man and machine could be possible, and is the ideal relationship. In this state, the person can receive feedback from the machine on an unconscious level about what the device 'thinks' about the situation. The machine, in turn, should also accept input from the user in non-explicit (i.e. by user commands) ways such as trepidation on the user's face. The best example of this given in the chapter is the way horse and rider both respond to each other, with decision making fluctuating between them depending on the situation.


Opinion
The chapter's purpose was to engage the reader's interest in the problems faced in machine-human interaction. What I took most from the chapter was the idea of the symbiotic relationship and the horse and rider example, which makes the idea of what could be possible very exciting. The applications of this seem rather limited to very few things, and not usable at all for the typical computing platform.