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We see this done properly in most automobiles where the driver can operate the windows through switches that are arranged in spatial correspondence to the windows.
In some cultures, time is represented mentally as if it were a road stretching out ahead of the person. As a person moves through time, the person moves forward along the time line. Other cultures use the same representation, except now it is the person who is fixed and it is time that moves: an event in the future moves toward the person.
Why does inelegant design persist for so long? This is called the legacy problem,
difficulty in inserting keys, batteries, or plugs is not a big enough issue to affect the decision of whether to purchase something, but still, the lack of attention to customer needs on even simple things is often symptomatic of larger issues that have greater impact.
The sociologist Erving Goffman calls the social constraints on acceptable behavior “frames,” and he shows how they govern behavior even when a person is in a novel situation or novel culture.
The meanings of today may not be the meanings of the future.
The difficulty with activity-based controllers is handling the exceptional cases, the ones not thought about during design.
a new way of doing things is only slightly better than the old, it is better to be consistent.
Standardization is indeed the fundamental principle of desperation: when no other solution appears possible, simply design everything the same way, so people only have to learn once.
The buzzes, clicks, and hums that you hear while a telephone call is being completed are one good example: take out those noises and you are less certain that the connection is being made.
The absence of sound can mean an absence of knowledge, and if feedback from an action is expected to come from sound, silence can lead to problems.
Skeuomorphic is the technical term for incorporating old, familiar ideas into new technologies, even though they no longer play a functional role.
A major cause of error is time stress. Time is often critical, especially in such places as manufacturing or chemical processing plants and hospitals. But even everyday tasks can have time pressures. Add environmental factors, such as poor weather or heavy traffic, and the time stresses increase. In commercial establishments, there is strong pressure not to slow the processes, because doing so would inconvenience many, lead to significant loss of money, and, in a hospital, possibly decrease the quality of patient care. There is a lot of pressure to push ahead with the work even when an outside
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Routine violations occur when noncompliance is so frequent that it is ignored.
Situational violations occur when there are special circumstances (example: going through a red light “because no other cars were visible and I was late”).
Slips occur when the goal is correct, but the required actions are not done properly: the execution is flawed.
Mistakes occur when the goal or plan is wrong.
slip occurs when a person intends to do one action and ends up doing something else.
Example of an action-based slip. I poured some milk into my coffee and then put the coffee cup into the refrigerator. This is the correct action applied to the wrong object. Example of a memory-lapse slip. I forget to turn off the gas burner on my stove after cooking dinner.
Example of knowledge-based mistake. Weight of fuel was computed in pounds instead of kilograms. Example of memory-lapse mistake. A mechanic failed to complete troubleshooting because of distraction.
The same processes that make us creative and insightful by allowing us to see relationships between apparently unrelated things, that let us leap to correct conclusions on the basis of partial or even faulty evidence, also lead to mistakes.
An interesting property of slips is that, paradoxically, they tend to occur more frequently to skilled people than to novices. Why? Because slips often result from a lack of attention to the task. Skilled people—experts—tend to perform tasks automatically, under subconscious control. Novices have to pay considerable conscious attention, resulting in a relatively low occurrence of slips.
Remember the discussion in Chapter 3 that most objects don’t need precise descriptions, simply enough precision to distinguish the desired target from alternatives. This means that a description that usually suffices may fail when the situation changes so that multiple similar items now match the description.
Among other things, our memories tend to be biased toward overgeneralization of the commonplace and overemphasis of the discrepant.
The mistake was in devising a rule that did not take account of emergencies. A root cause analysis would reveal that the goal was to prevent inappropriate exit but still allow the doors to be used in an emergency. One solution is doors that trigger alarms when used, deterring people trying to sneak out, but allowing exit when needed.
Hindsight is always superior to foresight.
We need to make it easier to report errors, for the goal is not to punish, but to determine how it occurred and change things so that it will not happen again.
Mistakes are difficult to detect because there is seldom anything that can signal an inappropriate goal. And once the wrong goal or plan is decided upon, the resulting actions are consistent with that wrong goal, so careful monitoring of the actions not only fails to detect the erroneous goal, but, because the actions are done correctly, can inappropriately provide added confidence to the decision.
in design, the secret to success is to understand what the real problem is.
The real world is not like the university. In the university, professors make up artificial problems. In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered. It is all too easy to see only the surface problems and never dig deeper to address the real issues.
They take the original problem as a suggestion, not as a final statement, then think broadly about what the issues underlying this problem statement might really be
If everything works perfectly, little is learned. Learning occurs when there are difficulties.
Any system that does not allow for special cases will fail.
The answer is to focus on activities, not the individual person. I call this activity-centered design. Let the activity define the product and its structure. Let the conceptual model of the product be built around the conceptual model of the activity.
Support the activities while being sensitive to human capabilities, and people will accept the design and learn whatever is necessary.
An activity is a collected set of tasks, but all performed together toward a common high-level goal.
Be-goals are at the highest, most abstract level and govern a person’s being: they determine why people act, are fundamental and long lasting, and determine one’s self-image. Of far more practical concern for everyday activity is the next level down, the do-goal, which is more akin to the goal I discuss in the seven stages of activity. Do-goals determine the plans and actions to be performed for an activity. The lowest level of this hierarchy is the motor-goal, which specifies just how the actions are performed: this is more at the level of tasks and operations rather than activities.
implicit knowledge; that is, within the heads of the workers.
Good product development teams work as harmonious groups, with representatives from all the relevant disciplines present at all times. If all the viewpoints and requirements can be understood by all participants, it is often possible to think of creative solutions that satisfy most of the issues.
After all, there are only a few basic ways by which a manufacturer can compete: three of the most important being price, features, and quality—unfortunately often in that order of importance. Speed is important, lest some other company get ahead in the rush for market presence.
stronger and to strengthen them even more. Then focus all marketing and advertisements to point out the strong points.
fast to be invented, slow to be accepted, even slower to fade away and die.
This is sometimes called Stigler’s law: the names of famous people often get attached to ideas even though they had nothing to do with them.
Eventually the bad features are modified into good ones, while the good ones are kept. The technical term for this process is hill climbing, analogous to climbing a hill blindfolded. Move your foot in one direction.
Does hill climbing always work? Although it guarantees that the design will reach the top of the hill, what if the design is not on the best possible hill? Hill climbing cannot find higher hills: it can only find the peak of the hill it started from. Want to try a different hill? Try radical innovation, although that is as likely to find a worse hill as a better one.
These fears have long been with us. In ancient Greece, Plato tells us that Socrates complained about the impact of books, arguing that reliance on written material would diminish not only memory but the very need to think, to debate, to learn through discussion.
After all, said Socrates, when a person tells you something, you can question the statement, discuss and debate it, thereby enhancing the material and the understanding. With a book, well, what can you do? You can’t argue back.
Reliance on technology is a benefit to humanity. With technology, the brain gets neither better nor worse. Instead, it is the task that changes. Human plus machine is more powerful than either human or machine alone.
