Reading Response #2

Over the course of the Winter 2011 semester, we will be reading Donald Norman's The Design of Future Things. Here are some of my thoughts on the first chapter of the book entitled "Cautious Cars and Cantankerous Kitchens: How Machines Take Control." A few of Norman's assertions jumped out at me when I read Chapter 1, especially when he states that "we're giving objects around us more initiative, more intelligence, and more emotion and personality" (p.2), which I think is true. We also humanize the objects around us in our daily lives too. I do agree with Norman when he states that "so-called intelligent systems have become too smug. They think they know what is best for us." (p.9) He goes on to discuss how navigation systems for cars tend to pick the routes that are the shortest distance between point A and point B, and sometimes it doesn't account for local traffic conditions (on-going construction here in Calgary) or even the desires of the driver who may want to take the scenic route. There are other "so-called intelligent systems" that around us everyday like DVRs (digital video recorders) or PVRs (personal video recorders) that have the capability to learn the type of TV programs and movies that you like to watch and take it upon itself to record it for you. My Shaw TV Motorola PVR doesn't do this but TIVO does. Which could lead to situations such as the one below.

(I was actually looking for a clip from the TV show King of Queens where Patton Oswalt utters the almost identical line, but this TV show does a nice job of illustrating the point)

As Norman puts it, "the conflict between human and machine actions is fundamental because machines, whatever their capabilities simply do not know enough about the environment, the goals and motives of the people, and the special circumstances that invariably surround any set of activities." (p.15) Who knows why the character chose to record "Will and Grace" and the Ellen Degeneres Show, but by making those selections TIVO made some assumptions about its owner.
There are other recommendation systems out there that do a better job, probably because they have access to more data. These recommendation systems can analyze past selections of the user, search for similarities to other items in their databases, examine the likes and dislikes of other people whose interests appear similar to yours (p.20-21). You can see examples of this when you do some online shopping at Amazon or Chapters-Indigo or even when you have Genius recommendations turned on in your iTunes account. Sometimes these recommendations are really good with iTunes. For example, I downloaded Vampire Weekend's entire first album from the iTunes store (it's great, you should check it out), and the Genius recommendation was for me to check our Ra-Ra-Riot, which introduced me to another really cool band that maybe shares some musical similarities to Vampire Weekend, but they are not clones of one another.

Another tidbit in the first chapter that jumped out at me was the part about the future of advertising and how it may mimic the style that it is in the movie Minority Report. There is pervasive advertising around us all the time and the message of what they want us to buy is there but it's not as intrusive as it is depicted here in the movie.


I thought that I would also take a quick look at "Page Layout" from the RBWD&U website, since I thought that it might pertain to our project more than some of the other links for this week's readings. From this reading I've pulled out a few of the important usability rules:

• avoid cluttered displays (this connects to one of the later rules with the use of white space)
• place important items consistently (navigation menu in the same place on every single page)
• place important items at top center
• structure for easy comparison (comparing payment programs)
• establish level of importance (hierarchy in the design)
• optimize display density
• align items on a page
• use fluid layouts (to accommodate people that have their monitor displays set at 1024 x 768 pixels or higher; for our project, we'll have to have our icons optimized for a smartphone display)
• avoid scroll stoppers
• set appropriate page lengths (don't have users scroll through pages of information)
• use moderate white space
• choose appropriate line lengths
• use frames when functions must remain accessible