| Title | : | The Design of Future Things |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0465002277 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780465002276 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 231 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2006 |
The Design of Future Things Reviews
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Notes to self:
Affordances as means of communication.
Risk homeostasis. Reverse risk compensation. (compensatory mechanisms)
Swarms. Predictive/interactive behaviour.
Cross-feedback. -
(3.0) Not as educational as
The Design of Everyday Things
Feels fluffier, less concrete, more repetitive (e.g. keeps coming back to autonomous driving (well, makes sense, he's funded/paid by Ford and Toyota at time of writing) and doesn't really add more as he does so). Feels like a rehashing of Everyday Things with just the added complication that the technology/devices/products now are "intelligent" and help automate things that humans would otherwise have to do (or couldn't possibly do) on their own. This does present design challenges, but we stay way too high-level for this to carry much weight. I do give him credit for keeping it relatively short. Some journalists I've read would've dragged this on 50% longer. -
Donald A. Norman's earlier The Psychology of Everyday Things (renamed with its first paperback release, apparently as a misguided sop to the business and marketing types who were incapable of appreciating the elegance and poetry of the original title, to the sadly prosaic
The Design of Everyday Things) was a landmark work, filled with meticulous, pithy and interesting observations about how the objects around us succeed, and fail, when measured against our expectations and assumptions.
It's a lot harder to make such meticulous observations about the future, of course, and Norman's 2007 book
The Design of Future Things suffers greatly in comparison, largely from that inability to be as specific. The Design of Future Things is essentially a work of science fiction, but it's an overly cautious one, taking current trends in automation and computing expertise and drawing some plausible conclusions about what could happen "if this goes on." Norman's conclusions in this case seem to be about 1/3 Viewing With Alarm, 1/3 simple skepticism and 1/3 cautious optimism—a plausible extrapolation, to be sure, if not exactly visionary. Norman refuses to take the wilder leaps of conjecture that would come from a true sf author's word processor, accepting instead that current limits on computers' processing power, real-world sensing apparatus and interconnectivity will be overcome only slowly. He explicitly acknowledges but does not seem to take to heart the implications of
Moore's Law. This caution is a worthy and, frankly, unusual trait for a futurist, but it also makes for a rather less exciting book.
And then there are other parts of the book that seem merely amateurish and rushed; the hand-drawn sketches appear to have been dashed off at lunchtime and inserted at whim, with awkward captions only loosely tied to the text, and then Norman's foray late in the book into actual scientific fiction comes across as stiff and didactic, like something from a 19th-Century fabulist rather than a 21st-Century author.
I picked this book up the second time, honestly, because I did not remember having read it before; make of that what you will. Norman's points here are mostly valid ones, and this book is, all in all, a worthwhile read... but I find myself not making this recommendation with much enthusiasm. -
Norman takes his ideas from The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design and applies them to "intelligent" machines or artificial intelligence in this book. However, given that this book was published in 2007, it does not have the groundbreaking quality of the earlier books. He also does not cover broader systems such as computer software or the web, which forms a large part of our human-machine interactions today. Ironically, many of the ideas he presents are probably more innovative when applied to software systems today.
One interesting idea here is the concept that intelligent machines/software need not, and should not, always attempt to predict or read human minds, an impossible task, at least for now. This has led to frequent frustration and occasionally, danger.
Instead, they should complement or supplement human behaviors and intelligence, allowing humans take the lead, and providing assistance while taking into account human emotions. Some machines might do better to simply provide humans with greater awareness through their better sensors or provide physical aid, allowing each party to do what they do best.
Another idea is that the communication to achieve this should be through non-intrusive, peripheral, means where machines should not demand attention unless absolutely critical. Machines designed for human use must take into account human emotions and irrationality, so the tone of this communication is also important.
When applied to machines today, these ideas may not seem that innovative, but I think there is great opportunity to apply them to content creation software tools, such as game development tools. Tools that always provide you with qualitative information of different factors (how many enemies in the level, how difficult so far, how complex, etc), tools that automate the creation of content like placing props, etc.
While interesting, this book is not quite as seminal as his previous work. One interesting aspect to cover in the future could be human social interaction and dynamics through, or with, machines. -
Short, readable musings on the design of technology to help people and to replace people. Norman exposes some basic limitations of technology in automating human thoughts and actions, including inferring reason. He often looks at these issues through the lens of an automotive designer working on self-driving cars, but discussions on kitchen appliances also are in abundance here. This was written more than a decade back now and the thoughts expressed are more common now than when written. Nevertheless, the conversational, pop-science tone and understandable explanations makes this of interest.
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If you haven't read Donald Norman's
The Design of Everyday Things, I would urge you to put it on your reading list. It was a catalog of human factors design failures, and a set of prescriptions to improve design. An excellent read.
In The Design of Future Things Norman tries to recreate his earlier success, with mixed results. He is as insigntful as ever, but the material is a tad thin. To fill space he resorted to repetition and added a wholly extraneous and redundant 'afterword'.
He proposes six rules for designers of automated or 'smart' machines:
1. Provide rich, complex, and natural signals.
2. Be predictable.
3. Provide good conceptual models.
4. Make the output understandable.
5. Provide continual awareness without annoyance.
6. Exploit natural mappings.
He provides at least one negative and one positive example for each of these rules.
A major theme of the book is that machines work well if they can be fully automated and operate autonomously, or when they are completely human controlled. But the middle ground is troublesome. If automation works most of the time and then suddenly fails, trouble results. Since many tasks cannot be fully automated, it is a challenge to engineers and designers to find a way to design machines that can interact safely and usefully with humans. -
So now 10 years passed we have cars that drive sleeping people to work, Amazon Echo and Roombas. The bad and good things that were predicted in this book actually happened. When autonomous self-driving fails we have catastrophic crashes, we not sure about all possibilities of Alexa, but the robot vacuum cleaner does its job well every day.
D. Norman tried to create heuristics method for IoT in this book. It's repetitive sometimes, has a lot of examples and finished in some kind of weird conversation.
Recommended for everybody who creates a better world for humanity not only through the screen -
Many of the principles elaborated in this book can already be found in Norman's previous work (The Design of Everyday Things), however, this book does provide a wealth of examples of cutting edge technologies and some of the design considerations involved. The book is worth reading for the examples alone. I found Norman's treatments of the relationship between humans and technologies to be insightful, but lacking in more sustained development. In particular, I kept wondering what is Norman's underlying philosophy of technology, how does he envision technological systems, their construction, goals, and social impact. Most especially, is good design recognized by more than safety and ease of use? Nonetheless, Norman does provide some interesting thoughts about trust and the role of technological augmentation versus technological autonomy, which I found to be thought provoking and useful. I suggest reading the Design of Everyday Things first, and then moving onto this book for a useful update of technological examples and considerations about technological automation.
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I feel a little bit bad about giving 'The Design of Future Things' by Donald Norman only three stars. The previous book I read of his, 'The Design of Everyday Things', was very good and informative, yet this book felt too abstract and theoretical and lacked real life examples.(perhaps this is an unfair negative judgement, because it is a book concerning the future).
It did propose some useful rules for HOW we should think about design in the future; however, his rules were rules/demands and not guidelines. There was also limited examples as to what exact changes could be made. The rules almost seem too demanding and do not take into consideration the art of design whatsoever. I think that design needs to take into psychology, structure (form), and the artistic form of design, and not just a single one of these.
Some great points and facts stated include that machines and humans need to engage in dialogue and not two monologues, when things are safer the accident rate does not decrease because people are more likely to take risks, machines should be predictable, a machine's signal (such as a microwave beeping) should not be annoying (excluding a fire alarm, because its function is literally to alert by any means), and machines should be as easy to understand as possible. -
Some nice ideas (of course) even if it’s an older book.
Implicit Communication - things are naturally expressing their state. Like that one. Lots of good lists like before.
Update to affordable - communication between designer and user. Interesting addition to the thought, but I feel it doesn’t replace the initial concept situational relations between object and its uses.
Weird predictions, and a general optimism about technology that needs to be reconciled with reality of the impacts on culture.
Still sees technology as a thing rather than an evolving set of systems.
Really weird conversation with AI at the end, very late 1990’s.
Fun and brilliant tho. Critical for the design of both growth cycles and the creativity engine. -
Un autre livre extrêmement intéressant de Don Norman, sur l'attention à apporter aux objets "du futur" qui commencent peu à peu à faire leurs chemins dans nos vies. De nouveau très facile à aborder bien que s'attaquant à de grands problèmes de fond, il aide à mettre en valeurs plusieurs règles extrêmement importantes à intégrer dans le développement des machines et autres robots qui peuplent peu à peu notre quotidien. Extrêmement intéressant à lire pour toute personne se développant dans l'IOT.
"As machines start to take over more and more, however, they need to be socialized; they need to improve the way they communicate and interact and to recognize their limitations." -
Мне показалось, что это, скорее, сборник статей, объединенных одной мыслью.
Мысль эта такая - появляется все больше "умных машин", с которыми у нас нет, т.н. "общей основы", поэтому диалог с такими устройствами превращается, скорее, в набор монологов, а это значит, что для хорошего дизайна взаимодействия, нужно это учитывать.
Как-то так. Прочитал с интересом, но местами пережевывание одного и того же. Плюс, как уже написали в некоторых отзывах к этой книге - акцент довольно сильно смещен на автомобили. -
Easy read for beginner tech designers. It's a nice general guide, but not a comprehensive checklist. I do agree with most reviews that this book has a lot of repetitive things, especially from "The Design of Everyday Things". I think "The Design of Everyday Things" provides a lot more detailed analyses, and that the contents of "The Design of Future Things" could've just been added to the other book as part of an extended edition.
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I would give this book more than three and slightly less than four. A good follow up to the Design of everyday things. More than a decade old yet still relevant. Many of the technologies envisioned by Don Norman matured to everyday use, yet many of his laments about human to machine machine to human interaction and proposals how to do it better are still left out of the design process.
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Excellent book for anyone designing any thing. Lots of great information, but for some reason, I had a harder time really getting absorbed by this book as compared to his other book titled “The Design Of Everyday Things”. Both books work well together, but “…Everyday Things” seemed to be just a notch or two better!
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I was hoping for a coffee table book, but there were too few pictures and too much text. When the first chapter failed to grip, I gave up.
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No question of how Dan book can make an impact. Like a beautiful novel it strikes us and takes us thru the flow of design in future.
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The book exprains automation and Augmentation in very simple terms.
Recommended for beginners but others might not find it as useful. -
Book Review
Social Machines
A new book argues that machines work best when they help us perform, not perform in our stead.
The Design of Future Things by Donald A. Norman. Basic Books. 2007. 231 pages. $27.50.
“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, simple or direct than does Nature. In her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous,” Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci once remarked. Former Apple vice president Donald Norman’s Design of Future Things is very much rooted in this Leonardesque sentiment. The short, conversational book serves as both a meditation on the nature of human–machine interaction and a warning: invention that ignores the human, the artful, and the natural will fail both conspicuously and disastrously. “We are confronting a new breed of machine with intelligence and autonomy, machines that can indeed take over for us in many situations,” Norman writes. “In many cases, they will make our lives more effective, more fun, and safer. In others, however, they will frustrate us, get in our way, and even increase danger. For the first time, we have machines that are attempting to interact with us socially.”
We spend ever more time conversing with machinery. In the obvious sense, this means more interfacing (the technologist’s preferred term) with a wider variety of devices: selecting from an assortment of rinse cycles on our washer; setting lighting systems, motion detectors, and security devices as we leave the house; starting up the car; programming the MP3 player, GPS computer, and even the cruise control before actually hitting the gas.
As our interfacing opportunities increase, so does the potential for human–object miscommunication.
Machines may work like clockwork, but they handle surprises like robots— which is to say, poorly. We rely on them when we shouldn’t and find ourselves (ironically) lost after following the directions of a computer that can neither see nor drive, mopping up after a stubborn washer that refuses to stop when we open the lid midcycle, apologizing to the police on our doorstep for our well-intentioned but overly vigilant security systems.
What’s missing from the human– machine relationship, says Norman, is a sense of respectful partnership. His book is full of examples of what a better tête-à-tête might look like. A Microsoft Cambridge “smart” home actually seeks to make its occupants smarter, allowing family members to leave messages on digital surfaces viewable anywhere throughout—or outside—the house. It’s a vision of home as digital administrative assistant rather than as butler. A Georgia Tech smart home can watch you cook and—if you have to break away to answer the phone—remind you where you left off. Bad memory? The house also monitors your prescriptions and can let your family do the same. After all, who knows you best?
“Both groups of researchers could have tried to make the devices intelligent,” Norman points out. “Instead, both groups devised systems t h a t would f it smoothly into people’s life styles. Both systems rely upon powerful, advanced technology, but the guiding philosophy for each group is augmentation, not automation.”
Automobiles are another example of machines that could become less automatic and more “social.” Radio frequency identification and similar technologies already allow cars to communicate with tollbooths, so why not with other cars? It will be a long time before such car-to-car collaboration eliminates the need for traffic lights and speed limits. In the meantime, cars that could better negotiate their position, speed, and distance with one another would most certainly prevent wrecks.
What’s most important, says Norman, is that the inventors of the future transcend the binary distinction between the practice of art and the science of engineering and move toward a comprehensive “science of design.” The notion harkens back to sixteenth-century Florence, a time and place where broad knowledge and boundless curiosity were considered as valuable as narrow expertise or a declared major. If a more generalist approach yields objects that better reflect the coherence of nature— rather than the whim of marketers—then the objects of tomorrow will be unquestionably smarter. ❑
About the Reviewer
Patrick Tucker is the senior editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society. E‑mail [email protected] .
This review originally appeared in THE FUTURIST, May-June 2008 -
– Машина отличная, – ответил он, – но навигационной системой я вообще не пользуюсь. Я х��чу сам выбирать маршрут, а она все решает за меня.
– Слушай, – говорит дом, пока ты утром собираешься на работу, – куда ты спешишь? Мусор я выбросил, мог бы, кстати, и спасибо сказать. И хорошо бы нам поговорить насчет этого симпатичного регулятора – помнишь, я показывал тебе его на фото? С ним я буду работать куда эффективнее, и, между прочим, у дома Джона он уже есть.
«Это абсолютно безопасно, – уверяли меня представители принимающей стороны, – только не надо „помогать“ велосипедистам. Не пытайтесь от них увернуться. Не останавливайтесь, не шарахайтесь в сторону. Ведите себя предсказуемо». Иными словами, не надо замедлять ход и менять направление. Велосипедисты тщательно просчитывают траекторию движения, чтобы не столкнуться друг с другом и с пешеходами, и это работает, если не происходит ничего неожиданного. Но когда пешеход пытается уклониться от едущего навстречу велосипеда, дело кончается плохо.
Таким образом, появление ремней безопасности, мотоциклетных шлемов, защитных щитков у футболистов, более высоких и удобных лыжных ботинок, систем по предотвращению заносов и контроля устойчивости в автомобилях приводит к тому, что люди начинают вести себя более рискованно.
Обмениваться информацией можно не только внутри роя, но и с другими роями. Так, рой, движущийся в одном направлении, может делиться информацией с роем, едущим в противоположную сторону, сообщая ему о том, что ждет его впереди. Кроме того, при интенсивном движении ведущая машина сможет передавать информацию остальным, информируя их об авариях, пробках и других дорожных проблемах.
Создатели Newton утверждали, что он способен распознавать рукописный текст и преобразовывать его в печатный. Идея отличная, но тогда, в 1993 году, эффективных систем распознавания рукописных текстов не было. Задача эта технически очень сложная, и по сей день окончательно она не решена. Систему для Newton разработала группа российских ученых и программистов, работавших в небольшой фирме Paragraph International. Это был весьма передовой программный продукт, но при его разработке не было соблюдено сформулированное мною правило человекомашинного взаимодействия: работа таких систем должна быть понятна пользователю.
Но человеческий мозг меняется даже без генной инженерии, «волшебной» биомедицины и хирургии – просто в результате получаемого опыта. Известно, к примеру, что мозг лондонских таксистов, известных отличным знанием города, отличается от мозга обычных людей увеличенным гиппокампом, который развивается за счет многолетней тренировки памяти. Впрочем, лондонскими таксистами дело не ограничивается. У многих специалистов наблюдается увеличение областей головного мозга, которые отвечают за сферу их деятельности. Опыт действительно меняет наш мозг. Факты говорят о том, что продолжительный контакт с технологиями, например многочасовые упражнения на музыкальном инструменте или набор кнопок на клавиатуре мобильного телефона и иных портативных устройствах, способен воздействовать на мозг.
Те из нас, кто живет в городах, освоили и другие трюки. Мы оборудуем светофоры фальшивыми кнопками, чтобы пешеходы думали, будто переключают их. В лифтах мы устанавливаем кнопки быстрого закрывания дверей, �� в офисах – ложные термостаты. Естественно, провода мы не подводим, так что все эти кнопки и термостаты не работают, но людям так приятнее. Парадоксально, но факт. -
Don Norman's webpage --- Don Norman, a champion of human-centred design.
Machines are getting smarted. We read about visions of smart homes that will automate all the mundane actions of life, such as regulating light and temperature, even ordering groceries. Norman sounds a caution in his book -- even human-human interactions go awry because our communication is not perfect, how much more so when machines try to 'read minds' using what they can measure about human behaviour and environment.
While there are many occassions when replacing humans with automation are beneficial and work well (e.g. search-and-rescue missions, high precision assembly in the factory), Norman suggests an alternative where machines augment, not replace, human intelligence, especially in places where the focus is on human interaction, such as the home.
He invites the reader to imagine a stereotypical intelligent calendar prototype - coordinating everyone's calendars and giving reminders. Would it one day start recommending tv shows and telling you how to lead your life? That would seem very efficient, but also 'most unhuman'.
Norman cites an alternative approach by a group of researchers at Cambridge (England). The group decided that it was people that made the home smart, not technology. Hence, they decided to support each family's solution to their own needs and not automate any one solution. One device they came up with to help people with calendaring is a smart magnet. Each is tagged to a day of the week, and would light up on that day. Thus, if you put the 'wednesday' magnet over the note relevant to that day, and when Wednesday comes, the magnet would start glowing. A useful reminder that is not annoying, because you can choose to ignore it.
With intelligent autonomy, systems would try to infer the intentions of people. With intelligent augmentation, devices would still let people decide when and where they are to be used. Augmentative tools are comforting because they leave decision-making to people, allowing different people to make different choices.
Norman also discusses more general design principles for smart machines. Those who have read "
the design of everyday things" would feel a sense of familiarity when reading his observations of the disconnect between creators of technology think users want and users actually want, and his call for modern human-machine interactions to mimic natural interactions.
These ideas for good design are summarised at the back of his book:
1. provide rich, complex, and natural signals
2. be predictable
3. provide good conceptual models
4. make the output understandable
5. provide continual awareness without annoyance
6. exploit natural mappings
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I have always been a big fan of good design, but have never really had an opportunity to read much about it from those who make design their living. Recently, thanks to some advanced prototyping and manufacturing tools that have become widely accessible, I’ve been dabbling into design and have made a few of my own gadgets. At the same time I came across this book in the local public library, and thought it would be a good reading material to go with my fledgling design hobby. However, the book turned into a bit of a disappointment.
This book is neither an introduction to the design concepts and techniques, nor a wide-ranging look at the future of design. It comes closer to the latter paradigm, but the narrowness of its subjects and the shallowness of approach don’t lend themselves easily to the deeply thoughtful look at the design of the future things. The book takes a closer look at the issues that pertain to the design of a few interesting “futuristic” technologies (self-driving cars in particular feature prominently), and presents the case to the reader that what we would want out of these technologies may in fact not be either the safest or the best designed solution when it comes to their implementations. The book offers a few insightful observations, and a short checklist of good design principles. Many of these are pretty good overall, but the brunt of their points could have been summarized into an essay that is perhaps a third of the size of this, already very thin, book.
If you are looking for some casual musings by an authority on the subject of design, then this book might be for you. Otherwise you may want to read something that is a bit more technical and systematic. From what I’ve heard about it, The Design of Everyday Things might be a much better read on this subject. I’ll try to check it out at some point in the future. -
Este libro trata de cómo mejorar la relación de las personas con las máquinas teniendo en cuenta que cada vez son más "inteligentes", con más iniciativa y asumiendo más responsabilidades, y por lo tanto tenemos que preocuparnos de cómo interactuamos con ellas.
Es un libro evidentemente técnico, orientado a los diseñadores de productos, pero se aproxima mucho a lo que podría ser un libro de ciencia ficción puesto que aventura cómo podría ser la relación entre las máquinas, cada vez más inteligentes y con cierta personalidad, y las personas.
Empecé a leer el libro porque me gusta mucho el enfoque que tiene
Donald A. Norman respecto al diseño de productos siempre desde un punto de vista psicológico por lo que sus recomendaciones sirven para diseñar cualquier tipo de producto.
Si tengo que ponerle alguna pega sería que el libro se centra mucho en el diseño de automóviles, creo que el autor ha estado trabajando para Ford, aunque todos los conceptos se puedan aplicar a otros productos.
"I’m driving on the same winding, mountain road, and I notice that my car is tense: it’s scared. The seats straighten, the seat belts tighten, and the dashboard starts beeping at me." -
This book is an attempt to describe the current relationship between people and machines, and to find a path to optimal design strategies for the relationship going forward. It does some of that, but a lot of what it does it repeat itself. He told the same stories three or four times, and frequently described an idea in detail, discussed it, and described it again. Maybe I'm impatient, but I think this would've been a much better speech or article than book.
On the plus side, some of the concepts were interesting, and it did provide a framework for working the increasing intelligence of machines into daily life less painfully. The most useful point (to me) was that we like intelligence that doesn't control us, but only recommends. I.e., Amazon recommendations good, self-driving cars bad. Also, he pointed out how often we use very slight variations in sounds to diagnose problems, and I liked his recommendation that rather than binary annoying sounds (beeps, buzzes) we design things for more natural ranges, with sounds closely reflecting the current state of the system.
So, good idea, but a bit too long. Use your judgement. :)
