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Book Reading #45 - Things That Make Us Smart

Chapter 3: The Power of Representation

Summary:

Chapter three talks about how external aids make us smart. The two basic external aids mentioned by the author are - paper and pencil. Paper and pencil made it possible to store, retrieve and spread information, thus making people smarter. These cognitive artifacts help people to keep a track of complex cognitive tasks. Then the author talks about the representing world and the represented world. Represented world is the world that the user sees or interprets. The representing world consists of parts of the represented world.

Discussion:

This book, also written by Don Norman is very easy to read. The author proves his point using lucid language and excellent examples. It was interesting to know that how easy it was to add Roman numerals, but I had no idea how to do it since we don't do roman numeral algebra quite regularly. I completely agree with Norman's view of representation, when correctly used, it can enhance a person's understanding about using a device or understanding a technology.

Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person

Summary:

In this chapter, Norman continues to talk about artifacts. He differentiates between different types of artifacts - surface artifacts (we see all the information being represented) and internal artifacts (some information is latent and can't be seen). He also differentiates between active and passive artifacts and provides various examples to explain these differences. Then Norman discusses different ways to effectively represent information. Various affordances should be taken into account while representing information.

Discussion:

I thought the examples of puzzles he provides were really interesting - The Tower of Hanoi, Oranges and Coffee. He proves the point that artifacts must be designed carefully with a proper underlying purpose so the the user's learning is facilitated instead of being hindered.

Book Reading #43 - Things That Make Us Smart

Reference Information
Title: Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine
Author: Donald Norman
Publisher: 1994 Basic Books

Chapter 1: A Human-Centered Technology

Summary:

The book begins by talking about problems with the new technology, how it is designed to aid convenience but often ends up confusing the users and becomes the cause of human errors. Norman suggests that the technology should be more human-centered, meaning getting information from human errors and their causes and incorporate the lessons into the technology designs.

He talks about two types of sciences:

• Hard sciences: requiring accurate measurements.
• Soft Sciences: based on observations, data collection and classification.

He also talks about two types of cognition:

• Experiential: when people react to events quickly and effortlessly - reflex actions.
• Reflective: when people think and make a decision before reacting.

Discussion:

Norman makes an excellent point when he says that the designs should be human centered rather than machine centered. It's indeed very important to understand human psychology and why human make mistakes to come up with intuitive designs and interfaces. Humans make mistakes and they are nowhere close to being ideal, knowing this fact can lead to intelligent designs.

Chapter 2: Experiencing the World

Summary:

In this chapter, he further discusses the different levels of cognition. He also talks about how these levels are applied differently in the real world scenarios. He then talks about how information about these two cognitive behaviors can be used effectively to strike a right balance between the two and incorporating this balance in technology design, thus leading to decrease in human errors.

He talks about three types of human learning:

• Accretion: The accumulations of knowledge, information and facts.
• Tuning: Gaining expertise at a task by repeatedly performing it.
• Restructuring:Forming of the right conceptual model behind whatever is learnt. This is the hardest part of learning.

Yet another term that he defines is Optimal Flow - the state in which the mind becomes fully engrossed and involved in the learning process.

Discussion:

After reading about four Donald Norman books, his style of writing is getting pretty monotonous and repetitive. The examples and pictures do make it interesting for a while before it again becomes monotonous. I understand that Norman comes from a technical background rather than from a literature background. He seems to have plenty of brilliant ideas, but the way he puts them does get repetitive.