Book Reading #9: Design of Future Things

Design of Future Things
Donald A. Norman
Designed and Edited by Donald A. Norman


Chapter 5: The Role of Automation


Norman in this chapter again starts with one of his favorite examples of design of future things and talks about the smart home. He talks about a test one that researchers have built and about how the inhabitants who live in it take awhile to get used to the house just as much as the house takes awhile to learn its inhabitants routines. It is able to adjust the temperature and shut off the lights and he even talks about how if intelligence is not built into the design that the house could potentially shut off the light in the bathroom while a person is still using it. He talks about how these ideas essentially boil down to the idea of communication and the role that it plays with in the design of new machines and programs. He then moves to a more interesting point which is, is it possible to send messages to the house or in some way program the house to help a family increase its communication. If this system were possible it would allow for this transition of communication and possibly help the family to learn to use computers to aide in the process. He gives the idea of a central panel that would sit in the kitchen. The panel would have a few ways to communicate to it, by text, by writing on it, and by programing your schedule and then sending it to the device. The device would show each users activities for that day and then if someones plans changed they would be able to show that and others could respond. The example given was that one of the family members needed to stay later at football practice and would need someone to pick him up. He sent a text to the tablet and then someone at home saw it and wrote on the screen that it was handled. Norman claims that the beauty of this device is that it is not giving the family a way to communicate but augmenting the way they already communicate and doing it in a practical way that is easy to incorporate into their lifestyle. He says that new designs should keep this in mind augmenting the users capabilities not trying to change them.

I think this article is interesting but I do have to say I am getting rather bored with Norman talking about the same ideas over and over. We have seen this idea of the smart home a few times in the book and he keeps referring back to it giving more and more details about it. I think that if he wanted to write a whole chapter about the house and then just refer back to it "remember the smart house chapter" that would be fine but each chapter I feel like I am relearning what he wants me to know about the smart house. The other big thing that he talks about is interesting how a fridge is a centralized communication device and that families use it in different ways. I also like the idea of the tablet that is able to take messages from many different sources and then the entire family can respond in some meaningful way. The example he gave was good but I question how often someone would check it. If I am sitting at home watching TV or working on my computer I might not go to the kitchen and check the tablet for a period of hours. If I had a family member who was stranded at football practice I might not see the message and then never think to go pick them up. More over, if the device would inform me when someone added a message to the board by emailing me or texting me then that could be a really neat way to communicate. Essentially the board is acting like a mail list and sends it to every ones phones and emails so that someone in the family can then respond. I also wonder if there is some kind of consideration for people who try to send a response at the same time or if two people respond to the same message posting. Would the system inform the users? Anyway the idea was very good and did help but there might be other practical implications that could be tied to it to make it even better.