Not Quite a Blog

Link: http://groups.ischool.berkeley.edu/podcast/audio/Donald_Norman_UCiSchool_01Mar2006.mp3

Donald Norman, Co-Founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and Professor at Northwestern University gave the first School of Information Distinguished Lecture of the 2006 Spring semester today.

Here's the abstract of his talk (mp3 avaialable here):

Cautious Cars, Cranky Kitchens, Demanding Devices

Cautious cars? We already have them, cautious and sometimes frightened. Cranky kitchens, not yet, but they are coming. Our products are getting smarter, more intelligent, and more demanding, or if you like, bossy. This trend brings with it many special problems and unexplored areas of applied psychology. In particular, our devices are now part of a human-machine social ecosystem, and therefore they need social graces, superior communicative skills, and even emotions: machine emotions, to be sure, but emotions nonetheless. In this talk Dr. Norman explores the reasons for such statements, the issues that need to be considered, and the dangers that have already occurred because designers still think of each device as alone, and self-contained.

He was gracious enough to allow me to record his talk and it was a wonderful expression of what he is starting to refer to as a "science of natural interaction". That is, devices that we don't have to learn to use, but are just naturally usable. As well, he advocated a semi-bright line rule that things should either be fully automated or not automated at all; it's the half-way automation that gets into trouble. (He actually refined this a bit later in the talk to say that things between zero and 100% automation should give the users a clear indication of the uncertainty involved with their current state.)