The Invisible Computer, by Donald Norman

The Invisible Computer, by Donald Norman

Donald Norman is a famous technology curmudgeon. He came to prominence with the book The Design of Everyday Things, wherein he roundly condemned how badly designed most appliances are. In this book, his target is the personal computer. I used to think he was just a whiner who was too stupid to know what was going on, but recently, I've come around to his point of view. Computers do suck. They are too hard to use, and they're only getting worse. I, a well-educated computer professional, often can not get my computer to perform a straightforward task for me. So, I read this book with a bit less skepticism than I did TDOET.

He has an interesting vision of information appliances, each well-designed for a specific purpose. Unfortunately, I think he is vastly underestimating the infrastructure necessary to bring them into existence. He hand-waves and presupposes a universal message protocol for all information appliances to communicate, which he acknowledges is absolutely necessary for them to be useful. He flames about the unforeseen interactions between software on the PC, but doesn't acknowledge that interactions between separately designed appliances could be far worse.

Regardless, I think he has some good ideas. In particular, he emphasizes the need to have incentives match company goals. If a two divisions of a company are competing for the same bonus pool, then they have no incentive to cooperate since success for one means less bonuses for the other; in fact, he claims it's often easier for a division to cooperate with another company than with another division within the same company. Designers have no incentive to make a product user-friendly since the added technical support burden will not affect their budget. Good points, and something to be aware of in any company.


Eric Nehrlich's WWW home page / nehrlich@alum.mit.edu