http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Norman,_Donald_A A bibliography of works by Norman, Donald A in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Norman,_Donald_A http://tc.eserver.org/35092.html http://tc.eserver.org/35092.html A product is actually a service. Although the designer, manufacturer, distributer, and seller may think it is a product, to the buyer, it offers a valuable service. In reality a product is all about the experience. http://tc.eserver.org/33163.html http://tc.eserver.org/33163.html Field studies, user observations, contextual analyses, and all procedures which aim at determining true human needs are still just as important as ever – but they should all be done outside of the product process. This is the information needed to determine what product to build, which projects to fund. Do not insist on doing them after the project has been initiated. Then it is too late, then you are holding everyone back. http://tc.eserver.org/33042.html http://tc.eserver.org/33042.html 很多人难以理解我的那篇“以人为中心的设计是有害的”文章。 （哈哈，下面这样说可能有些保守！关于这个问题，肯定有五百篇评论和博客文章。） 特别地，我没能够清楚地说明“以活动为中心的设计”是什么意思，以及它和“以人为中心的设计”是如何的不同。 一些人好像认为我彻底抛弃了我以前说过的话。另外一些人则简单地认为我疯了。还有一些人则急匆匆地出来解释我那样说的含义。 http://tc.eserver.org/33008.html http://tc.eserver.org/33008.html Human-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. That’s a dangerous state – when things are treated as accepted wisdom. The purpose of this essay is to provoke thought, discussion, and reconsideration of some of the fundamental principles of Human-Centered Design. These principles, I suggest, can be helpful, misleading, or wrong. At times, they might even be harmful. Activity-Centered Design is superior. http://tc.eserver.org/33009.html http://tc.eserver.org/33009.html 在设计界，以人为中心的设计已经成为一个占统治地位的主题，以至于它经常被界面和应用设计人员不加思考地加以采用，更不要说是用一种带有批判的眼光加以采用。这是一种危险的状态――当某些事情被当作是被广泛认可的知识来对待时。这篇文章的目的就是要引起人们对于以人为中心设计方法的基本原理的重新思考和讨论。我认为，这些原理可能是有益的，有误导性的，或是是错误的。有时候，它们甚至可能是有害的。以活动为中心的设计是更好的一种方法。 http://tc.eserver.org/33010.html http://tc.eserver.org/33010.html HCD has developed as a limited view of design. Instead of looking at a person’s entire activity, it has primarily focused upon page-by-page analysis, screen-by-screen. As a result, sequences, interruptions, ill-defined goals – all the aspects of real activities, have been ignored. And error messages – there should not be any error messages. All messages should contain explanations and offer alternative ways of proceeding from the message itself. http://tc.eserver.org/33011.html http://tc.eserver.org/33011.html From my outsider’s point of view, automobile interior design seems to be first and foremost about appearance, about style. Function matters, but it is not the primary focus, except for anomalies, such as when consumers force cupholders down the throats of reluctant designers or insist upon easy to fold rear seats for SUVs and the ilk. It feels as if dashboard designers see functions as irritants: so many controls and devices, so little room. How can we ever manage? http://tc.eserver.org/31573.html http://tc.eserver.org/31573.html The Human Research Institute has conducted extensive studies of the proper form of Machine-Human Interaction (MHI). Most of our work has been summarized in our technical report series and was presented at the last global MHI symposium. This report summarizes the key findings in nontechnical language, intended for wider distribution than just the specialized designer machines. http://tc.eserver.org/31574.html http://tc.eserver.org/31574.html 编者：本书最后部分，作者比较了由机器开发的设计原则和由人总结的设计原则。下文中是机器对于如何与人交流的想法。 http://tc.eserver.org/30862.html http://tc.eserver.org/30862.html Designers of DVDs have failed to profit from the lessons of previous media: Computer software, Internet web pages, and even WAP phones. As a result, the DVD menu structure is getting more and more baroque, less and less usable, less pleasurable, less effective. It is time to take DVD design as seriously as we do web design. The field needs some discipline some attention to the User Experience, and some standardization of control and display formats. http://tc.eserver.org/28956.html http://tc.eserver.org/28956.html I am in favor of good design and attractive products. Easy to use products. But when it comes time to purchase, people tend to go for the more powerful products, and they judge the power by the apparent complexity of the controls. If that is what people use as a purchasing choice, we must provide it for them. While making the actual complexity low, the real simplicity high. That's an exciting design challenge: make it look powerful while also making it easy to use. And attractive. And affordable. And functional. And environmentally appropriate. Accessible to all. That's why I like design: it presents wonderful challenges. http://tc.eserver.org/28033.html http://tc.eserver.org/28033.html How many times have you had to fight hard for the ability to do field studies and other observations at the very start of the project? How many times have you patiently explained that taking time now would be rewarded by faster time to market overall? And how many times were you successful? The HCI community has long complained about product processes that do not allow time to start with good observations. The more I examine this issue, the more I think that it is we, the HCI community, who are wrong. http://tc.eserver.org/26904.html http://tc.eserver.org/26904.html Google 的真实情况是怎样的呢？回答是：它并不简洁。 瞧，我喜欢 Google。它是个很棒的搜索引擎，但是我比较反感听到有人表扬它的外观优雅而简洁。见鬼，所有的搜索引擎都有一部分是优雅而又简洁的：在输入框中输入要查询的词语，然后按“回车”键。 “不”，有人会马上反对说：“Google的搜索页面是那样的简洁、优雅，没有和其它的功能挤在一起”。 http://tc.eserver.org/26872.html http://tc.eserver.org/26872.html Anybody can make a simple-looking interface if the system only does one thing. If you want to do one of the many other things Google is able to do, oops, first you have to figure out how to find it, then you have to figure out which of the many offerings to use, then you have to figure out how to use it. http://tc.eserver.org/25324.html http://tc.eserver.org/25324.html What does one of the world's leading authorities on usability say about PowerPoint? As cofounder of the Neilsen Norman Group and author of the classic The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman is a strong advocate of user-centered design and simplicity. Surprisingly, Norman disagrees with PowerPoint's most vocal critic, information design guru Edward Tufte. http://tc.eserver.org/25193.html http://tc.eserver.org/25193.html In the world of design, the term 'affordance' has taken on a life far beyond the original meaning. It might help if we return to the original definition. Let me try to clarify the definition of the term and its many uses. http://tc.eserver.org/25070.html http://tc.eserver.org/25070.html I was having a conversation with the designers, considering their suggestions, accepting some and rejecting others. The designers may not have been there to listen, but their statements clearly required an answer. http://tc.eserver.org/24838.html http://tc.eserver.org/24838.html Until recently, emotion was an ill-explored part of human psychology. Some people thought it an evolutionary left-over from our animal origins. Most thought of emotions as a problem to be overcome by rational, logical thinking. And most of the research focused upon negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger. Modern work has completely reversed this view. http://tc.eserver.org/24839.html http://tc.eserver.org/24839.html We are all designers -- because we must be. We live our lives, encounter success and failure, sadness and joy. We structure own worlds to support ourselves throughout life. http://tc.eserver.org/18402.html http://tc.eserver.org/18402.html Human beings have evolved a rich and sophisticated set of processes for engaging with the world in which cognition and affect play two different but equally crucial roles. Cognition interprets and makes sense of the world. Affect evaluates and judges, modulating the operating parameters of cognition and giving a warning about possible dangers. The study of how these two systems work together provides guidance for the design of complex autonomous systems that must deal with a variety of tasks in a dynamic, often unpredictable, and sometimes hazardous environment. http://tc.eserver.org/18393.html http://tc.eserver.org/18393.html Please don't confuse affordance with perceived affordances. Don't confuse affordances with conventions. Affordances reflect the possible relationships among actors and objects: they are properties of the world. Conventions, on the other hand, are arbitrary, artificial and learned. Once learned, they help us master the intricacies of daily life, whether they be conventions for courtesy, for writing style, or for operating a word processor. Designers can invent new real and perceived affordances, but they cannot so readily change established social conventions. Know the difference and exploit that knowledge. Skilled design makes use of all. http://tc.eserver.org/18392.html http://tc.eserver.org/18392.html The word 'affordance' was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, affordances are a relationship. They are a part of nature: they do not have to be visible, known, or desirable. Some affordances are yet to be discovered. Some are dangerous. I suspect that none of us know all the affordances of even everyday objects. http://tc.eserver.org/18394.html http://tc.eserver.org/18394.html People trained in the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences (BCSS) seldom play a critical role in the development of new products. Yeah, they do user testing and sometimes take part in the design, but seldom take part in specifying the product in the first place. Moreover, when economic times get tight, they are among the first to be let go. Why the failure? I place the blame squarely upon BCSS itself: students are badly prepared for the demands of a product-driven industry. Faculty are equally ill-prepared, and therefore unable to make a difference -- assuming they would even be interested in doing so. http://tc.eserver.org/18395.html http://tc.eserver.org/18395.html Benway and Lane have studied 'Banner Blindness' – the fact that people tend to ignore those big, flashy, colorful banners at the top of web pages. This is pretty interesting stuff, for the entire reason they are so big and obnoxious is to attract attention, yet they fail. Evidently nobody ever studied real users before -- they simply assumed that big, colorful items were visible. This paper, shows once again the importance of observations over logic when it comes to predicting human behavior. People behave the way they behave, not the way our logical analyses and wishes would have them behave. People follow their interests, their needs, their customs. They are driven by curiosity, boredom, emotion. And the 'they' refers to 'we': us. http://tc.eserver.org/18408.html http://tc.eserver.org/18408.html We humans are biological animals. We have evolved over millions of years to function well in the environment, to survive. We are analog devices following biological modes of operation. We are compliant, flexible, tolerant. Yet we people have constructed a world of machines that requires us to be rigid, fixed, intolerant. We have devised a technology that requires considerable care and attention, that demands it be treated on its own terms, not on ours. We live in a technology-centered world where the technology is not appropriate for people. No wonder we have such difficulties. http://tc.eserver.org/18396.html http://tc.eserver.org/18396.html Design as practiced is considerably different from design as idealized in academic discussions of 'good design.' A few years ago, I made the transition from the university to industry--a deliberate decision on my part to practice what I had long been preaching, and to try to understand the constraints and pressures from the business point of view. How nice it would be, I thought, to be able to see products in the marketplace that reflected my design philosophy. This chapter recounts one stage of my learning process: issues that seem simple from the vantage point of academia are often extremely complex when seen from inside the industry. Indeed, the two sides seem hardly to be speaking the same language. In the course of my experiences, I have come to recognize that industry faces numerous problems that are outside of the scope of the traditional analyses of design. In particular, there are management and organizational issues, business concerns, and even corporate culture. http://tc.eserver.org/18407.html http://tc.eserver.org/18407.html Designers of DVDs have failed to profit from the lessons of previous media: Computer Software, Internet web pages, and even WAP phones. As a result, the DVD menu structure is getting more and more baroque, less and less usable, less pleasurable, less effective. It is time to take DVD design as seriously as we do web design. The field needs some discipline some attention to the User Experience, concern about accessibility for those with less than perfect sight and hearing, and some standardization of control and display formats. http://tc.eserver.org/18401.html http://tc.eserver.org/18401.html Advances in our understanding of emotion and affect have implications for the science of design. Affect changes the operating parameters of cognition: positive affect enhances creative, breadth-first thinking whereas negative affect focuses cognition, enhancing depth-first processing and minimizing distractions. Therefore, it is essential that products designed for use under stress follow good human-centered design, for stress makes people less able to cope with difficulties and less flexible in their approach to problem solving. Positive affect makes people more tolerant of minor difficulties and more flexible and creative in finding solutions. Products designed for more relaxed, pleasant occasions can enhance their usability through pleasant, aesthetic design. Aesthetics matter: attractive things work better. http://tc.eserver.org/18403.html http://tc.eserver.org/18403.html Education is hot in business as well. The rise of corporate universities is well established, with companies literally spending billions of dollars to educate their employees. Education is now a business, with multiple companies offering courses and degrees as a successful, profit-making business. Of course, one of the problems when everyone is for something is that everyone has a different idea of what it is that they are for. Everyone who is for education seems to have a different idea of what to do, hence the challenge. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that our educational system is in trouble. Something has to be done to fix it. But what? To me, anything that is truly worthwhile is something that is also a major challenge. If you were facing an easy task, why bother? So it's a great year to be graduating, for anything truly worthwhile, anything that will make a difference, not just to you, but to many, is going to be hard. This is a great year, for there are great challenges ahead of you. http://tc.eserver.org/18397.html http://tc.eserver.org/18397.html Notice how frustrating most company websites are. Lots of pretty pictures that take forever to load. Hardly any information on a page. Notice how difficult it is to find the information you seek, and especially, how difficult it is to do comparison shopping. Don't companies realize that in today's world, the website is a great opportunity to practice customer-centered interaction -- make the customers happy and they will come back again and again? Frustrate them and, well, the competition is only a click away. http://tc.eserver.org/18409.html http://tc.eserver.org/18409.html Agents occupy a strange place in the realm of technology, leading to much fear, fiction, and extravagant claims. The reasons for this are not hard to find: the concept of an 'agent,' especially when modified by the term 'intelligent,' brings forth images of human-like automatons, working without supervision on tasks thought to be for our benefit, but not necessarily to our liking. Probably all the major software manufacturers are exploring the use of intelligent agents. Myths, promises, and reality are all colliding. But the main difficulties I foresee are social, not technical: How will intelligent agents interact with people and perhaps more important, how might people think about agents? http://tc.eserver.org/18398.html http://tc.eserver.org/18398.html People err. That is a fact of life. People are not precision machinery designed for accuracy. In fact, we humans are a different kind of device entirely. Creativity, adaptability, and flexibility are our strengths. Continual alertness and precision in action or memory are our weaknesses. We are amazingly error tolerant, even when physically damaged. We are extremely flexible, robust, and creative, superb at finding explanations and meanings from partial and noisy evidence. The same properties that lead to such robustness and creativity also produce errors. The natural tendency to interpret partial information -- although often our prime virtue -- can cause operators to misinterpret system behavior in such a plausible way that the misinterpretation can be difficult to discover. http://tc.eserver.org/18405.html http://tc.eserver.org/18405.html I am not in favor of deception, trickery, fraud, or swindle. What I wish to change are the curriculum and examination practices of our school systems that insist on unaided work, arbitrary learning of irrelevant and uninteresting facts. I'd like to move them toward an emphasis on understanding, on knowing how to get to an answer rather than knowing the answer, and on cooperation rather than isolation. Cheating that involves deceit is, of course wrong, but we should examine the school practices that lead to cheating: change the practices, and the deceit will naturally diminish. http://tc.eserver.org/18404.html http://tc.eserver.org/18404.html I have long been struck by the power of the computer game to mesmerize, to hold the attention of otherwise restless children for hours and even days. I have watched otherwise unruly children focus, study, collaborate, and problem-solve. They read hint books, save checkpoints, the better to be able to try 'what-if' scenarios. They consult, the create. They solve. They do all the activities we wish them to do in pursuit of an education: What a shame that what is being learned is so trivial, so worthless. Now imagine a time when we transform education. When we can craft educational problems as cleverly as the game creators create theirs, allowing students to delve into the complexity of topics as deeply and as thoroughly as they delve into the games. Excite them to dive into the task, voluntarily working hard to learn the skills necessary to succeed. Only this time, the skills learned will be the ones necessary to be successful, well-educated citizens of society: mathematics, history, writing, science, art, and so on. http://tc.eserver.org/18399.html http://tc.eserver.org/18399.html The fault lies with the separation of powers. There are four legs to product development. Four equal legs are required for good product design, all sitting on the foundation of the business case. http://tc.eserver.org/18406.html http://tc.eserver.org/18406.html The traditional university is all things to all people, but it is primarily a place for professors to learn, to study, and yes, to teach. The teaching follows the traditional model of pouring knowledge into the heads of obedient students. This is a teacher-centered model of education, one that has repeatedly been shown to be inferior. Aristotle showed how learning can be an exploration. Pundits ever since have continually rediscovered active ways of engaging the mind. The university has resisted, for these other ways were not conducive to the comfortable life of a teacher. And anyway, it didn't feel like teaching. But today, education remains one of the last remaining labor-intensive activities, and it is pricing itself out of the marketplace. Worse, it does so using a methodology known to be deficient. Enter technology. http://tc.eserver.org/18400.html http://tc.eserver.org/18400.html The Web puts user experience of the site first, purchase and payment second. On the Web, people first experience the usability of a site and then buy something. Get a good experience, and the person is apt to turn into a frequent and loyal customer. But the web offers low switching costs: so, only if the site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around. After all, there are eleven million other sites to go to on the Web. http://tc.eserver.org/11917.html http://tc.eserver.org/11917.html Donald Norman recommends a list of books on human-centered design.