SIGCHI Bulletin, October 1994, Vol 26, number 4. pages 78-79.
Book Review
Things That Make Us Smart
by Donald A Norman
Reviewed by John A Waterworth
Donald Norman's new book "Things That Make Us Smart" develops the themes
raised earlier in his "The Psychology of Everyday Things" (POET). POET
was concerned with the ways in which designed things can help or hinder
us in completing everyday activities like opening doors, operating drinks
machines, or using the bathroom. He convincingly showed how many of our
artifacts are badly designed for their purpose and spelled out what this
says about the attitudes of their designers. He pointed out that a
misunderstanding of the way people interact with artifacts, an
inappropriate machine-centered approach to design, results in a
pathological combination of person and machine leading to frustration,
inefficiency and danger. This message was brought home with a series of
entertaining anecdotes that partly explains why the book was so popular.
The latest "Things" book starts with this theme and attempts to take
us deeper into human cognition by considering the design of things that
support thought directly. Where POET showed that getting work done can
be hindered or foiled completely by the mental burden of dealing with
inappropriate design, the new book focuses on mental work itself. This
seems like the natural ground for Norman to develop his thesis about the
relationship between artifacts and human thought, but somehow the attempt
is unsuccessful. This is partly because the stories are just less
entertaining, but mostly (and this is why the stories are so dull) because
there are so very few convincing examples of smart-making things. We
should ask ourselves why this is the case.
Norman claims that things make us smart, not in the sense of feeling a
sharp, stinging pain but that:
"Technology has made us smart, smart
in the sense of being better able to think,
to reason, to make judgments"(p 250).
This follows from the fact that technology changes how tasks are achieved.
If technology can change how we accomplish the task of, say, searching
for water underground, surely it can also change how we achieve cognitive
tasks like writing this paragraph. And if such cognitive work is
facilitated by technology (such as being able easily to change parts of
this paragraph without having to rewrite the rest) then surely the
quality of thought will improve? Not just more thoughts, better thoughts.
He is optimistic that, if used appropriately, in a "human-centered" way,
this trend for improvement will continue as we evolve via the development
of increasingly helpful information technology.
One link in Norman's argument is that if technology is designed to match
the cognitive characteristics of people they will work more productively,
will be happier about using the technology, and will have or cause fewer
accidents. In other words, cognitive ergonomics is a good thing. I don't
think this is a claim with which many people would disagree. (Strangely,
it seems that not enough people take it seriously, despite decades of
work in the area, starting during World War II and blossoming in
commercial and academic labs in the 80s. It's good that Norman continues
to preach this faith so persuasively, but one is tempted to wonder why
ergonomists, human factors psychologists and cognitive scientists have
still not reversed the tendency for technology to be "machine-centered".)
No, the problem lies in extending the argument to those devices that
directly support cognitive activity.
What are these cognitive artifacts that improve the quality of human
thought? Language, paper and pencil, spatial storage systems such as
filing cabinets--these certainly seem to make productive thought more
likely. Do they directly facilitate thought? Perhaps only in the case
of language. Norman rightly stresses the importance of the mind's
representational capacity, the ability to form mental models that enable
us to understand and explain relatively complex behavior and other
processes. He suggests we invented language, and that the invention of
this uniquely powerful cognitive artifact sets us apart from animal and
machine intelligences by providing the tool for thought that allows us
to continue to 'invent ever more useful cognitive artifacts that in
turn support even more invention, even better quality thought.
There are problems with viewing language as a cognitive artifact much
like a notebook or a well-organized office. Norman rightly states:
"Human Language is enormously complex by
mathematical standards: Many of its properties
still defy scientific description" (p 118).
Yet we invented language? We, who had no language to use as a
cognitive tool to help us invent things, invented the most complex
of our artifacts, language itself? I guess we must have been pretty
smart already.
Norman demonstrates the representational capacity of the mind, while
making the valuable point that accuracy of representation is not
always important, with the example of dreaming. He remarks, in a
passage that gives a flavor of the book's style:
"It has long been noted that in dreams,
people are free of the constraints of everyday
life. We can visualize doing things that are
impossible in the real world. Ah, the freedom
of dreams, the fantasies released The
impossible actions of dreams might be
ways by which people satisfy their fantasies.
But they might also result from the
impoverished programming power of the,
human mind suppose, just suppose, that
the wonderfully creative fantasies of our
dreams are artifacts, accidents of the fact
that our minds can't quite handle the
computational job of doing accurate
simulation" (p 150).
The idea that dreaming is a kind of simulated virtual reality where
deviations from realism result from inadequate processing power is
interesting, but really only an aside. It doesn't add to the main
argument since it does not really bear on the question of tools for
thought, but rather of the capacity for creating unreflective
experiences.
What improvements in quality of thought arise from computerization,
from information technology? If any artifacts demonstrate how things
can make us smart it should be these, yet Norman has little to say
about information technology. What he does say seems rather to
contradict his thesis. He is concerned that recent technology fosters
experiential cognition rather than reflective cognition. In other
words, we passively watch television, or actively navigate around
our multimedia interactive guide to the Smithsonian Institute, but
we don't really think about what we are experiencing. As Norman
puts it,
"One can have new experiences in this
manner, but not new ideas, new concepts,
advances in human understanding: For
these, we need the effort of reflection"(p 17).
How can artifacts created to serve the function of reducing mental
effort be designed to encourage that very effort? This is the
central dilemma of the book, one that Norman does not resolve except
by invoking the hardly new, and in this context inadequate, notion of
human-centered design.
Because of information technology, we do have much more information
at our disposal. We can work at home, on planes, trains and in cars.
Many of us can communicate rapidly and easily with individuals all
over much of the world. We do seem to be able to do more of a certain
kind of work with information technology than without, but do we work
better? Do we write better books, do we say more profound things, make
better art? Or do we just churn out more material? None of the great
thinkers of history had much in the way of 'cognitive artifacts'
beyond pen and paper. Is the quality of our thinking better than
theirs?
The obvious conclusion is that information technology, however well
designed, gets in the way of thinking reflectively. It does not make
us smarter, and is not helping us solve the enormous global problems
we face. It provides increasingly rich and realistic experiences, and
this is the main thrust of new developments such as multimedia and
virtual reality, which is where the action is. Making the reasonable
assumption that the technological push is irresistible, by this view
the best we can do is minimize the damage by designing relatively
harmless 'cognitive artifacts'. It is as dangerous, and false, to
expect technological solutions to life's problems from 'cognitive
artifacts' as it was to expect them from AI (as so many did in the
1980s).
There is a strong dose of cognitive dissonance for any computer
scientist who might be tempted to see the information revolution, and
their role in it, in this light. I his may be what underlies the
pervasive optimism in these circles. When one has a vested interest
in thinking otherwise, and in the face of relentless promotional
propaganda, it has become hard to accept that things do not make us
smarter, they simply make us more powerful (and dangerous). "User-
centered system design", "Cognitive Ergonomics" and "Human Factors
Psychology", far from heralding an improvement in the quality of
thought, represent a last ditch attempt to retain some element of
reflection in the exercise of this increased power. They are vital
for that reason alone.
So, human-centered design? Yes. Because it will create things that
make us smart? No. In fact, we need human-centered design just
because things won't make us smart. We need human-centered design
to stop the things we make making us even less smart than we already
are. A more accurate title for Norman's book would have been
"Avoiding things that make us more STUPID", but perhaps that would
not have sold so well.
Norman's new book is not as much fun as POET. It is not so
entertaining, feels conceptually thinner, and is a bit repetitive.
But it is thought provoking in some ways, and the message about the
need for human-centered design bears endless repetition. HCI
specialists will find it easy reading. Did it make me smart?
Only in the same, irritating way that sitting in a patch of nettles
would. What irritated me most is that it seems to have been written
for someone who has been off the planet, or in suspended animation,
for the past 10 years. Perhaps it should be recommended reading
for the AI community.
Donald A Norman. Things That Make Us Smart (Addison-Wesley, 1993);
290 pages.