The design of everyday and future things
Two decades ago Don Norman wrote a classic book on Human-Computer Interaction titled “The design of everyday things“. In his book, Norman stengthens and supports the significance of usability in everyday things like doors and taps. All of you who are not familiar with the book or its author you may laugh… “how difficult is to open a door?” you may wonder! Well, a brief read of just a couple of pages will give you a great range of such examples. Afterwards, you will realise that life could be much easier if some things were designed better 
At the time of writing, Norman is preparing another book titled “The design future things”. Fortunately, he has published a draft of the first chapter “Cautious Cars & Cantankerous Kitchens”. The following is the last paragraph which outlines the concept of the book:
We fool ourselves into thinking that we can solve these problems by adding even more intelligence to the devices, even more automation. We fool ourselves into thinking that it is only a matter of communication between the devices and people. I think the problems are much more fundamental, unlikely to be solved through these approaches. As a result I call for an entirely different approach. Augmentation, not automation. Facilitation, not intelligence. We need devices that have a natural interaction with people, not a machine interaction. Devices that do not pretend to communicate, that are based on the fact that they do not and cannot. It is time for the science of natural interaction between people and machines, an interaction very different than what we have today.
I am really looking forward to this. At the moment, I am reading the “Everyware: the dawning age of ubiquitous computing” by Adam Greenfield.
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πολλα δυνατον post! τζε το draft του πρωτου chapter ωραιο τζε ενδιαφερων. εν HCI που καμνεις;
I never expected that I would see a cypriot comment in this blog. Firstly, lets translate your comment for the non-cypriots readers:
The answer to your question Nicolas is yes. I am doing the MRes course in Design and Evaluation of Advanced Interactive Systems at the University of Lancaster.
P.S. Don’t get me wrong, but I would like to keep this blog in English please.
Oh!!!!! Memories
“The design of everyday things“ by Don Norman. The first book I had to read for my first lesson at the University of Crete…
Nice. Hopefully HCI will not be such a big problem now with WEB 2.0 technology although i am sure it would still be an issue.
I think it HCI nowadays is not getting the attention it used (although it should) as a priority item- although Jakob Nielsen in its latest book disagrees, since 3rd party software tend to have accessibility/usability in mind (not the crappy ones)!.
Thanks.,.
I’ll add your blog as a link!
Andreas Maratheftis
http://www.nueronic.com
information-communication-technology.blogspot.com
Thank you for your comment Andreas.
Indeed, the importance and significance of HCI is more clear nowadays. Nevertheless, many problems and issues continue to exist as they were described two decades ago by Norman. There is still room for improvements!
The “Web 2.0″ technologies have affect not only positively the interaction but negatively as well; one step forward, two steps backwards
I strongly believe that only if these technologies are used correctly can provide improvements on the web interaction. Otherwise, things are getting worse with inaccessible content, large in size javascript libraries and unnecessary/annoying effects.
when you guys say HCI will become better with web 2.0 technology what exactly do you mean? i believe web 2.0 is not even a technology, because its nothing new, the technology has always been around its just being used differently so that everybody has a chance to say something and make an impact on the web. web 2.0 relies solely on the people not the technology. so how does HCI become better now that web 2.0 “technology” is around?
Well, I could not agree more with you Charbel. “Web 2.0″ is nothing more than a buzz word. However, inevitably this buzz word is strongly related with particular technologies and concepts. So, I assumed that Andreas meant these technologies, when he mentioned “Web 2.0 technologies”.
As I have mentioned above, these technologies and concepts are able to enhance the web interaction. Unfortunately, most of them are inaccessible solutions which are often accompanied by “large in size javascript libraries and unnecessary/annoying effects”.