Number of words: 280 These fears have long been with us. In ancient Greece, Plato tells us that Socrates complained about the impact of books, arguing that reliance on written material would diminish not only memory but the very need to think, to debate, to learn through discussion. After all, said Socrates, when a person … Read more

Number of words: 409 In every successful product there lurks the carrier of an insidious disease called “featuritis,” with its main symptom being “creeping featurism.” The disease seems to have been first identified and named in 1976, but its origins probably go back to the earliest technologies, buried far back in the eons prior to … Read more

Number of words: 133 If we examine the history of advances in all technological fields, we see that some improvements come naturally through the technology itself, others come through standardization. The early history of the automobile is a good example. The first cars were very difficult to operate. They required strength and skill beyond the … Read more

Number of words: 534 The role of iteration in human-centered design is to enable continual refinement and enhancement. The goal is rapid prototyping and testing, or in the words of David Kelly, Stanford professor and cofounder of the design firm IDEO, “Fail frequently, fail fast.” Many rational executives (and government officials) never quite understand this … Read more

Number of words: 224 The initial research to understand the nature of the problem itself is part of the discipline of design research. Note that this is research about the customer and the people who will use the products under consideration. It is not the kind of research that scientists do in their laboratories, trying … Read more

Number of words: 430 One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve. Why such a counterintuitive rule? Because, invariably, the problem I am asked to solve is not the real, fundamental, root problem. It is usually a symptom. Just as in Chapter 5, where the solution … Read more

Number of words: 57 How should the design convey the information required to answer the user’s question? Through appropriate constraint and mappings, signifiers and conceptual models, feedback and visibility. The information that helps answer questions of execution (doing) is feedforward. The information that aids in understanding what has happened is feedback. Excerpted from ‘The Design … Read more

Number of words: 482 Consider the thermostat that controls room heating and cooling systems. How does it work? The average thermostat offers almost no evidence of its operation except in a highly roundabout manner. All we know is that if the room is too cold, we set a higher temperature into the thermostat. Eventually we … Read more

Number of words: 466 Ever watch people at an elevator repeatedly push the Up button, or repeatedly push the pedestrian button at a street crossing? Ever drive to a traffic intersection and wait an inordinate amount of time for the signals to change, wondering all the time whether the detection circuits noticed your vehicle (a … Read more