Some men see machines as they are and ask, “Why?” Donald Norman dreams of machines that never were and says, “Why not?”Actually, in this new book on the need for successors to the personal computer, Norman pursues both questions. And he answers them with the same wit, perceptiveness and prophetic zeal that made his 1988 book The Psychology of Everyday Things a minor classic.
Norman is a prominent expert in behavioral design, the art of creating tools that mesh well with their users. Well-designed objects, he teaches, require no special effort in order to be understood and operated. They do their jobs without calling attention to themselves. They make work efficient, even pleasurable.
Today’s personal computers, Norman argues, do none of these things. Instead, they regularly make their owners feel stupid, helpless and subservient. Today’s Macintosh- and Windows-based computers are immensely versatile, Norman grants, but when features and functions multiply to the point that the operating system is bigger than any of the applications it manages, frustration is the inevitable result. “Making one device try to fit everyone in the entire world is a sure path towards an unsatisfactory product,” he writes. “Either it will fail to accommodate the critical needs of some of its intended users, or it will provide unnecessary complexity for everyone.”
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