Chapter 1
Summary
This chapter is entitled,
The Psychopathology of Everyday Things,
in which Norman first presents the problems inherent in the designs of many commonly used items according to their various psychological aspects. He discusses the affordances, constraints and mappings that are present in the visible structure of an object; he discusses conceptual models of objects as they relate to good design principles, from the standpoints of the designer, the user, and the system itself; and lastly commented on the relationship between an object's complexity and it's usability.
Discussion
I thought this chapter was hilarious: it's funny because it's true. Norman concretely states the ideas that most of us have in our heads about how things should look or work, but unlike most people, he has the psychology to back up the
reasons why we feel that things should work the way they do. It is this fact, that he confirms that there is actually some reasoning that should be behind any design, that validates his work. He makes a good case for the considerations that should go into design.
Chapter 2
Summary
In this chapter,
The Psychology of Everyday Actions,
Norman talks about how the observance of how people perform actions with objects can reveal some of the design flaws inherent in the objects. He discusses why people sometimes blame themselves for committing errors due to poor design, and how they deal with what they had justified as acceptable design flaws versus unacceptable ones. Lastly he discusses the seven stages of action, and how "gulfs" in our knowledge base may lead to our committing errors in the execution and evaluation phases of completing an action.
Discussion
To me, the airplane and nuclear reactor incidents are two of the most telling examples of how our process of executing and evaluating actions can be at the same time clear indicators of obvious design flaws and the most overlooked elements of a design. This is made even more apparent by the fact that in both cases the investigating agencies looking into the incidents agreed that the operators did everything in their power to take the proper course of action given what they observed about the situation. I see this kind of situation crop up in application design and development all the time: a quick hack will almost invariably lead to inexplicable and unlocatable.
