Book Reading #5 - Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 2: The Psychology of Everyday Actions

Reference Information:
Title: Design of Everyday Things
Author: Donald Norman
Publisher: Basic Books (2002)

Summary:
In this chapter, the author explains why we make errors while operating machines, even though sometimes they seem very trivial and who do we blame for those errors. Norman says that if we seem to have trouble with getting a simple thing to work, for example, struggling with a button to turn the light on, which other people seem to have no trouble with, we automatically blame ourselves and our stupidity rather than analyzing and criticizing the design flaw that might exist. To prove this fact, he provides the example where the placement of the enter and the return keys on the computer keyboard caused confusion and errors, however, people blamed themselves for pushing the wrong keys, rather than blaming the design. If there's a possibility of an error, someone will make it. It's important to detect these possible errors in advance and design the machine in a way the errors can be avoided.
Norman also explains how people form erroneous theories (mental models) and their own creative interpretations of how machines work, just by looking at what they do and what result they provide. Yet another mistake that people do is to wrongly associate the cause with the result. If the user does some action A just prior to some result R, then the user concludes that A must have caused R, even if there was no relationship between the two. This often occurs due to the little information that users have to draw a conclusion.
Finally, the author mentions that each action comprises of seven stages, which are - forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying the action, execution of the action, perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the state of the world and evaluating the outcome.

Discussion:
I completely agree with author's opinion about design of everyday things and how erroneous designs can cause mistakes. I've also seen people blaming themselves for the design problems. There have been situations when I have done that myself. For example, at my employment, where I work as a student technician, clients blame themselves for the virus problems they encounter, however, it was really the fault of the anti-virus software that it did not do what it was supposed to do, i.e. stop the intrusion. Sadly, some people suffer from depression due to such behavior. The chapter clearly proves how simple things can matter a lot and how self-intuitive designs are extremely vital.