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With a good conceptual model, people can figure out what has happened and correct the things that went wrong. Without a good model, they struggle, often making matters worse. Good conceptual models are the key to understandable, enjoyable products: good communication is the key to good conceptual models.
Technology offers the potential to make life easier and more enjoyable; each new technology provides increased benefits. At the same time, added complexities increase our difficulty and frustration with technology.
The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology and the challenge for the designer.
When people use something, they face two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where they try to figure out how it operates, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where they try to figure out what happened (Figure 2.1). The role of the designer is to help people bridge the two gulfs.
What are the major design elements that help bridge the Gulf of Evaluation? Feedback and a good conceptual model.
How can the designer help bridge the two gulfs? To answer that question, we need to delve more deeply into the psychology of human action. But the basic tools have already been discussed: We bridge the Gulf of Execution through the use of signifiers, constraints, mappings, and a conceptual model. We bridge the Gulf of Evaluation through the use of feedback and a conceptual model.
Putting all the stages together yields the three stages of execution (plan, specify, and perform), three stages of evaluation (perceive, interpret, and compare), and, of course, the goal: seven stages in all.
It is only when we come across something new or reach some impasse, some problem that disrupts the normal flow of activity, that conscious attention is required. Most behavior does not require going through all stages in sequence; however, most activities will not be satisfied by single actions.
Let’s go back to my act of turning on the light. This is a case of event-driven behavior: the sequence starts with the world, causing evaluation of the state and the formulation of a goal.
This is called a root cause analysis: asking “Why?” until the ultimate, fundamental cause of the activity is reached.
The action cycle can start from the top, by establishing a new goal, in which case we call it goal-driven behavior. In this situation, the cycle starts with the goal and then goes through the three stages of execution. But the action cycle can also start from the bottom, triggered by some event in the world, in which case we call it either data-driven or event-driven behavior. In this situation, the cycle starts with the environment, the world, and then goes through the three stages of evaluation.
Opportunistic actions are less precise and certain than specified goals and intentions, but they result in less mental effort, less inconvenience, and perhaps more interest.
The seven stages provide a guideline for developing new products or services. The gulfs are obvious places to start, for either gulf, whether of execution or evaluation, is an opportunity for product enhancement. The trick is to develop observational skills to detect them. Most innovation is done as an incremental enhancement of existing products. What about radical ideas, ones that introduce new product categories to the marketplace? These come about by reconsidering the goals, and always asking what the real goal is: what is called the root cause analysis.
Most of human behavior is a result of subconscious processes. We are unaware of them. As a result, many of our beliefs about how people behave—including beliefs about ourselves—are wrong. That is why we have the multiple social and behavioral sciences, with a good dash of mathematics, economics, computer science, information science, and neuroscience.
One of the mysteries concerns the nature of and distinction between those activities that are conscious and those that are not. Most of the brain’s operations are subconscious, hidden beneath our awareness. It is only the highest level, what I call reflective, that is conscious.
The earlier questions were memory for factual information, what is called declarative memory. The last question could have been answered factually, but is usually most easily answered by recalling the activities performed to open the door. This is called procedural memory.
Because we are only aware of the reflective level of conscious processing, we tend to believe that all human thought is conscious. But it isn’t. We also tend to believe that thought can be separated from emotion. This is also false. Cognition and emotion cannot be separated. Cognitive thoughts lead to emotions: emotions drive cognitive thoughts.
Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. It is the emotional system that determines whether a situation is safe or threatening, whether something that is happening is good or bad, desirable or not. Cognition provides understanding: emotion provides value judgments.
More and more evidence is accumulating that we use logic and reason after the fact, to justify our decisions to ourselves (to our conscious minds) and to others. Bizarre? Yes, but don’t protest: enjoy it. Subconscious thought matches patterns, finding the best possible match of one’s past experience to the current one.
Subconscious thought is biased toward regularity and structure, and it is limited in formal power. It may not be capable of symbolic manipulation, of careful reasoning through a sequence of steps.
Hormones exert powerful biases on brain operation. Thus, in tense, threatening situations, the emotional system triggers the release of hormones that bias the brain to focus upon relevant parts of the environment.
positive emotional state is ideal for creative thought, but it is not very well suited for getting things done. Too much, and we call the person scatterbrained, flitting from one topic to another, unable to finish one thought before another comes to mind. A brain in a negative emotional state provides focus: precisely what is needed to maintain attention on a task and finish it. Too much, however, and we get tunnel vision, where people are unable to look beyond their narrow point of view. Both the positive, relaxed state and the anxious, negative, and tense state are valuable and powerful
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suggested that a useful approximate model of human cognition and emotion is to consider three levels of processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.
The most basic level of processing is called visceral. This is sometimes referred to as “the lizard brain.” All people have the same basic visceral responses. These are part of the basic protective mechanisms of the human affective system, making quick judgments about the environment: good or bad, safe or dangerous.
Visceral responses are fast and completely subconscious. They are sensitive only to the current state of things.
Here is where the style matters: appearances, whether sound or sight, touch or smell, drive the visceral response. This has nothing to do with how usable, effective, or understandable the product is. It is all about attraction or repulsion. Great designers use their aesthetic sensibilities to drive these visceral responses.
The behavioral level is the home of learned skills, triggered by situations that match the appropriate patterns. Actions and analyses at this level are largely subconscious.
For designers, the most critical aspect of the behavioral level is that every action is associated with an expectation. Expect a positive outcome and the result is a positive affective response (a “positive valence,” in the scientific literature). Expect a negative outcome and the result is a negative affective response (a negative valence): dread and hope, anxiety and anticipation. The information in the feedback loop of evaluation confirms or disconfirms the expectations, resulting in satisfaction or relief, disappointment or frustration.
The reflective level is the home of conscious cognition. As a consequence, this is where deep understanding develops, where reasoning and conscious decision-making take place. The visceral and behavioral levels are subconscious and, as a result, they respond rapidly, but without much analysis. Reflection is cognitive, deep, and slow.
It is reflection that drives us to recommend a product, to recommend that others use it—or perhaps to avoid it.
All three levels of processing work together. All play essential roles in determining a person’s like or dislike of a product or service.
Well-designed devices can induce pride and enjoyment, a feeling of being in control and pleasure—possibly even love and attachment.
When in the flow state, people lose track of time and the outside environment. They are at one with the task they are performing. The task, moreover, is at just the proper level of difficulty: difficult enough to provide a challenge and require continued attention, but not so difficult that it invokes frustration and anxiety.
Conceptual models are a form of story, resulting from our predisposition to find explanations. These models are essential in helping us understand our experiences, predict the outcome of our actions, and handle unexpected occurrences. We base our models on whatever knowledge we have, real or imaginary, naive or sophisticated.
The real point of these examples is not that some people have erroneous beliefs; it is that everyone forms stories (conceptual models) to explain what they have observed. In the absence of external information, people can let their imagination run free as long as the conceptual models they develop account for the facts as they perceive them.
Modern systems try hard to provide feedback within 0.1 second of any operation, to reassure the user that the request was received. This is especially important if the operation will take considerable time. The presence of a filling hourglass or rotating clock hands is a reassuring sign that work is in progress.
Some studies show it is wise to underpredict—that is, to say an operation will take longer than it actually will.
Interestingly enough, the common tendency to blame ourselves for failures with everyday objects goes against the normal attributions we make about ourselves and others.
It seems natural for people to blame their own misfortunes on the environment. It seems equally natural to blame other people’s misfortunes on their personalities. Just the opposite attribution, by the way, is made when things go well. When things go right, people credit their own abilities and intelligence. The onlookers do the reverse. When they see things go well for someone else, they sometimes credit the environment, or luck.
When people have trouble using technology, especially when they perceive (usually incorrectly) that nobody else is having the same problems, they tend to blame themselves. Worse, the more they have trouble, the more helpless they may feel, believing that they must be technically or mechanically inept. This is just the opposite of the more normal situation where people blame their own difficulties on the environment. This false blame is especially ironic because the culprit here is usually the poor design of the technology, so blaming the environment (the technology) would be completely
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We need to remove the word failure from our vocabulary, replacing it instead with learning experience. To fail is to learn: we learn more from our failures than from our successes. With success, sure, we are pleased, but we often have no idea why we succeeded. With failure, it is often possible to figure out why, to ensure that it will never happen again. Scientists know this.
The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves.
1. What do I want to accomplish? 2. What are the alternative action sequences? 3. What action can I do now? 4. How do I do it? 5. What happened? 6. What does it mean? 7. Is this okay? Have I accomplished my goal?
The insights from the seven stages of action lead us to seven fundamental principles of design: 1. Discoverability. It is possible to determine what actions are possible and the current state of the device. 2. Feedback. There is full and continuous information about the results of actions and the current state of the product or service. After an action has been executed, it is easy to determine the new state. 3. Conceptual model. The design projects all the information needed to create a good conceptual model of the system, leading to understanding and a feeling of
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One of my self-imposed rules is, “Don’t criticize unless you can do better.” Try to understand how the faulty design might have occurred: try to determine how it could have been done otherwise. Thinking about the causes and possible fixes to bad design should make you better appreciate good design.
Why the apparent discrepancy between the precision of behavior and the imprecision of knowledge? Because not all of the knowledge required for precise behavior has to be in the head. It can be distributed—partly in the head, partly in the world, and partly in the constraints of the world.
People function through their use of two kinds of knowledge: knowledge of and knowledge how. Knowledge of—what psychologists call declarative knowledge—includes the knowledge of facts and rules.
Knowledge how—what psychologists call procedural knowledge—is the knowledge that enables a person to be a skilled musician, to return a serve in tennis, or to move the tongue properly when saying the phrase “frightening witches.”
Knowledge in the world is usually easy to come by. Signifiers, physical constraints, and natural mappings are all perceivable cues that act as knowledge in the world. This type of knowledge occurs so commonly that we take it for granted. It is everywhere: the locations of letters on a keyboard; the lights and labels on controls that remind us of their purpose and give information about the current state of the device.
Normally, people do not need precision in their judgments. All that is needed is the combination of knowledge in the world and in the head that makes decisions unambiguous. Everything works just fine unless the environment changes so that the combined knowledge is no longer sufficient: this can lead to havoc.
