fun

Don Norman, usability demigod, is working on a new book, The Design of Future Things — working drafts of the first chapter and The Afterword are on line.  I haven’t read all of chapter one yet (about cars that fear, among other things), but the three page Afterword is a gem. The Afterword, titled “How to talk to people“, is a fictional set of instructions created at the Human Research Institute, by machines, for other machines, on how they should act and react and communicate with humans.  Humans are irrational, mistrusting, emotional and anxious, they take machines’ advice for criticism and consider the natural way to communicate that something is wrong with the machine is for it to beep and vibrate. Which just is not the logical way to behave (for a machine), but if you want to help those helpless humans, you do have to take some measures. An excellent read for all humans who are create machines that are to be used by humans.