Yet Another Technology Cusp: Confusion, Vendor Wars, and Opportunities
Considering the unexpected risks associated with seemingly minor technological changes.
Donald A. Norman
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As computer technologies increasingly invade everyday products, the risks of the traditional computer business must be revisited by each new industry, usually through failures. Issues include reliability of code, protection against component failure, security of data, privacy and security, safety, maintenance, and upkeep. There is one issue affecting all of these topics: ease of use. […]
How might we interact with future computers? Let me list the ways: by gesture; by hand, foot, and body motion; by the speed and forcefulness of our activities; by our thoughts, feelings, and emotions; by where, how, and when we look; by speech and sound; by music and touch. Imagine it, and it shall come […]
Collaborative computing: collaboration first, computing second
These articles on Collaborative Computing will seem out of place to a number of readers from the computer science community. Interesting articles perhaps, but what do they have to do with computers? Where is the science—that is, where is the mathematics, or the code? What have these issues to do with everyday practice?
Design rules based on analyses of human error
By analyzing the classes of errors that people make with systems, it is possible to develop principles of system design that minimize both the occurrence of error and the effects. This paper demonstrates some of these principles through the analysis of one class of errors: slips of action. Slips are defined to be situations in which the user's intention was proper, but the results did not conform to that intention. Many properties of existing systems are conducive to slips; from the classification of these errors, some procedures to minimize the occurrence of slips are developed.
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