The Design of
Future Things

Don Norman

Basic Books, 2007

ISBN 978-0-465-00227-6

$27.50

Reviewed by Gerard Torenvliet
Esterline CMC Electronics |

Gerard. [e-mail]

When I was in university studying human-computer interaction, the first paper that I ever wrote was a review of automation issues in the design of aircraft cockpits. One author cited was Don Norman, then a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, San Diego (he is now at Northwestern University). While other researchers were arguing that development had to be slowed because automation had come too far, too fast, Norman instead argued that most problems with automation had arisen because the field hadn’t progressed far enough. He thought that the advanced automation of the day was unable to provide the rich and nuanced feedback required for it to be a true partner with pilots in the cockpit. This argument made sense to me, but at the time I concluded that Norman’s perspective would be difficult to apply as of the early 1990s. As my freshman pen put it, “Norman’s solutions lie in the future.”

Fourteen years later Norman and I are still in a dialogue about automation. I now make a living thinking about how to design work support (which includes automation) for pilots, and he’s making a living thinking about the future. When I heard that Norman was releasing a book to help everyday people understand and demand more of the increasingly automated technology that the future will offer, my interest was piqued. I wanted to see if Norman would be able to do for the design of future things what he so successfully did for the design of everyday things in his 1998 book of the same name. In The Design of Everyday Things, he helped to make complex topics in cognitive psychology and product design accessible to the general reader, while at the same time prompting

specialists to see connections they may not have noticed before. Would Norman’s secret sauce be strong enough to do the same for the challenging issues involved in the design and use of advanced automation and intelligent machines?

Norman starts his investigation of the design of future things by taking a frank look at the advanced technologies that already surround us. He admires the ways in which technology has helped to improve our lives, while at the same time giving the reader eyes to see the limitations of these same technologies more clearly. Instead of griping about supposed “bad design” (a strange expertise possessed by design experts), Norman’s tone is supportive; he points out problems only to make the reader a part of the solution. The emergent thesis is that humans and technology are doomed to be locked in a bad marriage until we come to terms with the fundamental and unchangeable limitations of our relationship. Technologists aspire to create a dialogue between humans and machines, but a prerequisite for dialogue is a common understanding of context. Norman thinks that machines will never be able to develop an understanding of context anywhere as deep, broad, and flexible as humans, nor do they have rich enough means of communication. So our marriage is one with monologues from the machine being met by monologues from us. Dialogue will never result, because two monologues don’t equal a dialogue.

Without dialogue between us and our machines, it often feels as if they control us. Norman argues that this is a natural consequence of machines being weak. Their weakness means that they lack