Donald A. Norman
Designed and Edited by Donald A. Norman
Chapter 2: The Psychology of People and Machines
In this chapter we get to see a lot of examples and discussions on the authors beliefs on possible interactions that machines and people would have and the psychological factors present in these interactions. Examples of planes, refrigerators, and even houses who interpret what their human owners want or need are given. He begins by talking about more recent examples of machines that think such as chess playing computers. He said that these were very primitive and that probably the most relevant example today is computer games that interact with and respond to the player. He then talks about how as technology for these kinds of things slowly progresses that we will begin to see the advent of what he calls the "machine-human hybrid". Essentially he breaks the differences in machines in humans down into three parts: visceral, behavioral and reflective. He gives examples of how each of these is present in different interactions of machines and humans and how in some places one or the other fails to display one of these. He again goes back to some of the examples in chapter one such as car and driver, horse and rider and talks about how each of these interactions displays each of these but there is a system of trade offs between them. He closes the chapter by talking bout how there are some subtleties to human speech that will be very hard for computers to recognize. For example, people who have known each other for many years often tend to "think alike" and when they see something they can refer to it without having to directly name the article. There are situations when humans understand what another human is conveying but this might be very hard for a machine to interpret. He points out that currently machines do this by the advent of handshaking. In fact machines talk to each other all the time, when you connect to any site on the internet or your CAPSTONE BLOG, two machines are talking to each other and confirming that you are getting to the correct place. He points out that the design of future things is going to be based largely on these communication issues and how designers begin to understand them and work to correct them.
I think these ideas are very good and very solid but some of his ways of presenting these ideas about the psychological interactions of car and driver and horse and rider are very boring and don't make a lot of sense in the spirit of HCI. It seemed that he was hammering home his own examples more and trying to make them fit when there might have been a better way to present the information. I think the most clever part of the chapter is his stories where the machines are personified and actually assigned emotions. This is not because this is how I see machines but because with advancement of technology this is what some people actually want them to do. Another item I did like was the discussion of the machine-human hybrid. The idea that machines and humans could work in harmony and your house and computer and other devices in your life could help you stay healthy and live easier is a good idea. If I had a fridge that could help me track my calorie count by talking to it I would buy one in a heartbeat and then I'd ask it to recommend something for dinner based on my calorie count for the day. These kinds of things would be useful though he does say ideas such as what if you want to make Easter eggs and cannot have eggs this week etc. The end of the chapter when he talked about handshaking and communication of devices was almost like a review of UNIX. It wasn't that he was wrong it was just dry for me due to my experiences in my UNIX class. I am curious to read on in the book and I am hoping for more specific examples and research that people have done and products they've made.
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