Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles : Notes of a Technology Watcher

The author of The Design of Everyday Things offers a hilarious look at the ""perversity of inanimate objects"" with anecdotes about the often cumbersome relationships between humans and machines.

Mining the territory he explored in The Design of Everyday Things , Norman, in the first third of this entertaining and instructive volume, exposes clumsy design practices in water faucets, doors, stoves, kitchens and the U.S. Post Office's new stamp machine. The examples he cites are sometimes hilarious; for instance, an elevated monorail train in Australia requires a full-time attendant to prevent passengers from putting their tokens in the wrong slot. The rest of the book consists of engaging mini-essays on such topics as the use of refrigerator doors as message centers, the "real time" of computers versus psychological time, automotive signaling and cognitive aids in airplane cockpits. Norman likens design to an evolutionary process, but he maintains that most designers, unfortunately, are enamored of technology and lack empathy with the users of their devices. He serves up an eminently sensible smorgasbord of ideas, critiques and design insights. Illustrated.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It's coping with the technology of quotidian life that wears us down, of course. Norman (Cognitive Psychology/UC San Diego) reassures us that it's not our fault: It's design flaws. If it's broke, Norman knows how to fix it. (The original title of his The Psychology of Everyday Things, 1988, didn't quite work, so subsequent editions substituted ``Design'' for ``Psychology''). Cognitive science--the study of the way stuff gets known--naturally covers a lot of things, and here some are discussed more cogently than others. On learning that the odds are 50,000 to 1 against getting stuck in an elevator, Norman panics. Doing the math, he figures he will get stuck two or three times in his lifetime. On the other hand, he offers a study, actually going to the heart of scientific method, on the thickness of book jackets; a consideration of the meanings of ``real time'' and ``brain power''; an entertaining complaint against Mother Nature for egregious soil erosion; a survey on the uses of the refrigerator door as a communication center; and much intelligence on the real causes of ``pilot error.'' To err may be human, but it may also be the result of bad design. Norman argues for logical relations between a stove's knobs and its burners (``affordance mapping'') and for the efforts a writer owes to readers. The book's technical jargon is minimal and its author writes with the apparent ease of an Asimov. An engaging work by a benign technocrat who has designs on our minds. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Some years ago, Norman founded the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. In a lifetime of global travel and inquisitive analysis of human foibles, he has written various books and articles on the interaction of people and technology. Norman is troubled about "the dehumanizing nature of modern technology." Although he is not anti-machine, Norman is concerned that engineers often market technology with little regard for the consumers who will have to interact with hardware as the product. Writing clearly with humor and arresting insights, Norman analyzes such diverse topics as refrigerators as message centers in the home and pilots who place empty coffee cups over certain switches to avoid cockpit errors. Recommended.
- Roger Bilstein, Univ. of Houston-Clear Lake
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.