jnd.org   Books Essays Interviews Recommended Reading About Me In Praise of Good Design Ask Don NNg
home > books...

Search:

Jump to essays on

My Books

   
Living with complexity
Living with Complexity.

MIT Press, 2011.
The Design of future things

Available now at:
Emotional Design


Available now at:
The Design of everyday things

Available now at:
The Invisible Computer

Available now at:
Things That Make us Smart

Available now at:
                                     

Recommended Reading

Last Updated Updated January 11, 2012

List of Books, alphabetically by Title, followed by the last 25 reviews in reverse chronological order -- most recent reviews first:

Thinking Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This is an excellent summary of the latest thinking in the psychology of thought judgment, and decision making, written by one of the foremost scholars in the area. Highly recommended.

In this book, Danny Kahneman summarizes his life of research on human psychology. His early work has focused upon attention and decision making. Today he has shifted to the positive psychology movement, studying people’s judgments of happiness and contentment.

Much of his work was done with his long-time collaborator, Amos Tversky. Together, they studied how people make decisions and judgments. Their work has demonstrated that many of the underlying assumptions of economists are faulty. The work has been controversial, but its impact was also substantial, sufficient for the Nobel committee to present Kahneman the Nobel Prize in economics.

(Technically, this is not a Nobel prize because it was added afterwards, but it is treated as equal by everyone. Unfortunately, Tversky died before the prize was awarded, and the rules state that only live people can get it. Kahneman has stated that he considers it a joint prize for the two of them.)

The basic theme builds upon a highly oversimplified view of human thought. We have two systems, says Kahneman, one fast (and subconscious) and one slow (and conscious). The two operate according to very different principles and often reach opposite conclusions. The fast system is based upon experience, the slow one upon conscious reasoning and deduction. It can be very difficult for the slow system to over rule the fast one, which thereby gives rise to many human idiosyncrasies.

Why those names? Fast and slow? Actually, Kahneman calls them System 1 (fast) and System 2 (slow). Ich. Come on, Danny, how are we supposed to remember which is which - couldn’t you have called them slow and fast?

In my own work, I thought two systems was far too great a simplification, so I used three: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. My reflective level is basically the same as Kahneman’s Slow, System 2. But I have a finer level of analysis for the fast system.

I have known both Kahneman and Tversky for a long time. I worked briefly with Tversky in he early 1960s and met Kahneman soon afterwards. Both are brilliant, both have contributed much. I have long used their work and examples in my own thinking and writing (although I resisted Kahneman’s attempts to get me to use pupil size as a measure of Attentional load).

The book covers a wide range of phenomena, producing very important, counter-intuitive insights to many aspects of everyday life.

If there is any weakness, it is that most of the studies done with Tversky relied upon simple examples and questionnaires rather than on real behavior, in context. Draw your own conclusions: the examples, although artificial, are very compelling, especially when you will fall into his carefully constructed traps. Nothing is more convincing than your own wayward behavior. No wonder even hard-headed, rational thinking economists have been forced to reconsider their logical, sensible axioms. The axioms may be logical and sensible, but they do not describe real human behavior. Kahneman’s work has led the way. The rest of us need to follow the path.

Link to book at Amazon.com

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Kindle Edition: Thinking, Fast and Slow


The origins of the modern world Marks, R
Marks, R. (2007). The origins of the modern world: A global and ecological narrative from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century (2nd ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Pomeranz, K., & Topik, S. (2006). The world that trade created: Society, culture, and the world economy, 1400 to the present (2nd ed.). Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

I recently wrote a column for Core77.com entitled “Does Culture Matter for Product Design?” Although I argued that the evidence seemed to indicate that for mass-produced industrial design, the answer was no, I wondered whether this was a result of western bias. In my conclusion, I asked:

“how much of this argument derives from my own cultural biases? I’ve been educated in the West with a technical and scientific education. I’ve been a faculty member of major research universities in departments of psychology and cognitive science, electrical engineering and computer science, and industrial design. My experiences in business include positions as senior executive at large, multinational consumer electronic companies. Would someone with a very different background and education have reached the same conclusions?”

Just as I was finishing the essay, I discovered the two books listed above that treated history from a non-European point of view, emphasizing the critical role and world leadership, especially in trade, that Asia played until the 1800s.

These books support my hesitation. Had I read the books before I wrote my article, my conclusion would have been stronger: western biases have affected the way we build products.

Both books point out that the claims of European/American superiority in thinking (rational, logical thought) and governance (the rise of democracy) is a modern, western myth. Asia, whether Islamic or Muslim, whether the middle east, India, or China, had civilizations as advanced than those of the west, and probably more so in many areas. Moreover, they developed a deep, rich, trading system that was not ruled by a single power but instead through mutual economic interests, that flourished across the entire Asian and European continents. This held until roughly 200 years ago, when western powers (aided by the abundance of coal in Britain and the advent of the steamship) allowed them to use their military might to take over the long-existing trading routes that governed the substantial trade among the nations of Europe and Asia.

Two hundred years is not long in the total span of history, although it is long enough that most people’s memories do not cover the span. What will the next two hundred years bring, especially as we see Asia on the upswing again, regaining its previous world prominences.

These are important books. They overlap considerably, so you need read only one. I recommend both, but I prefer the one by Marks.

Read at least one of them: it will change your view of world history and of the relative importance of east and west.

Links to books at Amazon.com

The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century (World Social Change)

Kindle Edition: The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century (World Social Change)

The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, And the World Economy, 1400 to the Present (Sources and Studies in World History)

Kindle Edition: The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present



The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue Shumeet Baluja Princeton University press

This novel portrays a possible, unfortunate future, where privacy is gone and large search companies and governments can track people’s every deed, even if they don’t do them. The author, Shumeet Baluja, works at Google, and the startup culture depicted in the opening chapter as well as the life in the (fictitious) search company Ubatoo, are well done and extremely realistic. I’ve seen it all myself.

Baluja convincingly explains how it is possible to follow the network of the complex interactions among your activities and people you encounter. The result from these numerous tiny, innocuous pieces of data can be used to determine what you are likely to do in the future. All it takes is an enormous amount of computing, with literally millions of simultaneous processors and unimaginably large databases, all of which is available to Ubatoo’s employees (much to the envy of the FBI.

Much of this power is used to figure out what to sell you, but it is also quite useful to those who wish to spy upon you, or ferret out possible terrorists. The complex networks reveal the likelihood that someone has terrorist ties, and if the likelihood is high enough, they get put on a watch list. Whether or not the people on the list really are terrorists is irrelevant: once on the list, they are marked, perhaps for life.

The fictitious company Ubatoo bears a striking similarity to the real search company, also with a six-character name, with its famously inscrutable hiring practices that subject the candidate to hours of probing tests by people who haven’t the slightest clue about how to evaluate a candidate, multiple cafeterias well stocked with high quality food, and an internship process that is brutal.

All this is well depicted in a manner that veterans of the valley will recognize. But that’s not what is frightening. The frightening part is the total access that workers at Ubatoo have to every aspect of a person’s daily life: the interns delight in reading private emails, examining the search queries of people who they not only have identified, but whose on-line photos of their homes are displayed on large monitors that also display their activities, stroke by stroke. Ubatoo has access to phone calls, web searches, documents, purchases — all provided by its various product offerings.

Is this real? Baluja emphasizes in both the preface and the end notes that Ubatoo is fictitious and that, to his knowledge, no company has access to everything portrayed in the novel. (At least not yet.) Interestingly, he doesn’t state that interns and other workers can not (and do not) read people’s personal email.

The story itself is weak, with secret spy agencies (NSA? FBI? CIA?) plus dastardly foreign terrorists, but the writing is good and the plot easy to follow. The computational scenarios are realistic and the implications made obvious: hence the fright.

Read it: you will learn how modern search takes place and the various uses to which it is being deployed. Not a pretty picture, even though we all find the results useful.  The real question is whether we want this much power in the hands of powerful companies and governments. Note that the companies have much more powerful computational resources than government agencies. We have learned not to trust the government: why should we trust private, profit-driven companies?

Link to the book on Amazon.com
The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue

Kindle Edition: The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue


PDF of Chapter 1 (from the publisher’s website).

Digital Light Field Photography Ren Ng

Radical changes in the nature of photography are underway in the research labs all across the world, but up to now they have not been available commercially. The easiest way of summarizing these changes is to say that conventional photography captures an image whereas the new approaches capture the light field.  With an image, you are stuck with the composition, point of view and focus, and although you can enhance and improve upon technical components such as color and contrast afterwards, you are stuck with the image that resulted by the choice of viewing position, shutter speed, focal length, and focus.

It the future, all this will change. By capturing the light field, focus and composition can be determined after the fact. Up to now, he equipment required to do this was new and exotic and as a result it was expensive and delicate. Moreover, huge amounts of computational power were required to view the results. But now, the first fruits of all this research are about to be released in a product available to everyday photographers. Ren Ng’s PhD thesis “Digital Light Field Photography” demonstrates a system for doing this in a practical way. Take the picture today: decide which parts should be in focus tomorrow. And given that the thesis was done at Stanford in the heart of Silicon Valley, he has already started a company and received glorious press reviews.

Take your picture now: focus it later. See the samples at Lytro, his company, to experience the power: go to the website, select “Picture Gallery” and click on one of the out-of-focus parts of the photo.

You have to view the examples on the website and read the explanations to understand. But suddenly, taking pictures is much easier. The cameras don’t have to focus, lowering some of their complexity. The one or two second lag between pressing the shutter button and having the picture taken is eliminated because the lag was caused by the focusing mechanism which is no longer needed. And when you view the photos at home, you can decide which parts of the scene should be in focus, which parts should not be (for example, the background).

There must be some disadvantages, right? Yes, today there are tradeoffs. The technology works best with extremely high-resolution sensors, which means big sensors, ideally the size used by SLR cameras. As a result the camera is large - the same size as used by todays discerning photographers, but much larger than the point-and-shoot cameras so popular today. And the cost is apt to be high.

But all this will change. The camera sizes will decrease (as we discover what the acceptable tradeoff is between image resolution and the added convenience and power). The costs will decrease rapidly. And some day, every camera will capture light fields, not images. Moreover, the power will expand to allow recomposing a shot after the fact, the deblurring of moving images, and even stereoscopic images from single photos.


Where to find more:
Ren Ng’s dissertation that explains how it works. Note that this is the most readable and understandable technical dissertation I have ever read. You don’t have to know mathematics to understand the main points. All interested photographers should at least read chapters 1 and 2.

Lytro’s website. This is the company that Ng founded to commercially release the camera. The website has more descriptions, a pointer to the thesis, and lots of amazing examples of photographs that you can refocus right there on the website.

The Stanford website on computational photography

The Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
I highly recommend the Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction now being assembled by Mads Soegaard and the team at Interaction-Design.org. At the time I write this (July 2011) seven chapters are available, but I have examined the Table of Contents (not available to the public) and the breadth and depth of the invited contributions are quite impressive. The Contents I saw had 56 chapter covering an extremely wide range of topics, all with highly qualified authorities as authors. 
 
The chapters now available cover the gamut from A to V (Action Research to Visual Representation). All are available free, available for downloading, reading on line, and even excerpting (don’t forget to give proper credit and citation), all under a Creative Commons copyright agreement. 

I won’t write views of the chapters other than to say that I highly recommend them for professionals interested in learning about a new area of HCI and for educators interested in giving students excellent reference and educational material. 
 
Caveat: I often show up in the citations. I have written a commentary for one chapter (Marc Hassensahl’s excellent “User Experience and Experience Design”) and I am in the process of writing a commentary for another chapter (which has not yet been released). 
 
Citation: Soegaard, Mads, et al. (Eds). Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/
Ten Book Recommendations for March 2011 Twelve authors, from Anderson to Wu

As usual, I have fallen behind on listing and recommending books. Here are ten: each has a separate entry on my website page, and links appear below both to the review (the link on the title) and to the book at Amazon.com.

Anderson, R. (2008). Security engineering: a guide to building dependable distributed systems (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Pub.  Link to Security Engineering at Amazon.com

Cooke, N. J., & Durso, F. T. (2008). Stories of modern technology failures and cognitive engineering successes. Boca Raton: CRC Press.    Stories of Modern Technology Failures and Cognitive Engineering Successes on Amazon.com

Doctorow, C. (2009). Makers. New York: Tor. Download the book (legally) from his website: http://craphound.com/makers/download/      Makers on Amazon.com

Gawande, A. (2010). The checklist manifesto: how to get things right. New York: Metropolitan Books.   The Checklist Manifesto on Amazon.com

Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation. New York: Riverhead Books.    Link to Where Good Ideas Come From on Amazon.com

Lukic, B., & Katz, B. (2011). Nonobject. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. http://nonobjectbook.com/   Nonobject on Amazon.com

Moggridge, B. (2010). Designing media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.   Designing Media on Amazon.com

Morris, I. (2010). Why the West rules— for now: the patterns of history, and what they reveal about the future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  Link to Why the West Rules—for Now on Amazon.com

Pullin, G. (2009). Design meets disability. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.   Design Meets Disability on Amazon.com

Wu, T. (2010). The master switch: the rise and fall of information empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.  The Master Switch on Amazon.com




The Master Switch Tim Wu Alfred Knopf

Wu, T. (2010). The master switch: the rise and fall of information empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Tim Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law school and a fierce defender of Internet neutrality (he invented the term “net neutrality”), has written a great book about the rise and fall of media neutrality throughout American history. Whether it is the early days of motion pictures (when all the film studios were on the east coast, mostly New York), radio, or the telephone, each medium started with individuals able to explore the potential coupled with their own creativity as small, independent entrepreneurs, but as the medium gained respectability and business potential, big business stepped in to take it away, own it, exploit it, and where necessary get the congress to enact legislation giving them control (two notable examples being the rise of RCA in radio and AT&T for the telephone). These companies formed legal monopolies, preventing competition, stifling innovation (but with the side benefits of reliable, dependable products). (Although Wu deplores the takeover, he is honest enough to discuss the virtues of monopolistic control.)

The story was repeated for television, FM radio, and now the dominance of cable companies. AT&T was split up into pieces, only today to have rejuvenated itself, where it is now called, AT&T all over again. Newspapers, publishing … all fell. Will the Internet be next?

Tim Wu has just been appointed senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, a move that has silenced him for awhile (he is no longer free to attack companies in public writings, for example), but in theory, that gives him more power over regulatory authorities who will have major say over any new developments.

The book is fun to read, as titans battle over control. It is also disturbing to read, for these battles have greatly impacted the music, movies, and news that we experience. Here, for example, is his view on Facebook:

I think Facebook is looking for a mentor, they are looking for a role model. Right now it is choosing between Apple and Google in this great war between open and closed. It is possible that whatever side Facebook takes will have a lot to do with the future of how we communicate. (Interview with Nick Bilton, New York Times, Nov. 14, 2010.)

Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post quoted him as saying (Feb. 8, 2011):

“I think there are critical periods in industry formation where there is a strong need for a public voice” Wu said in a statement. “The Internet platform has given rise to new and hard problems of privacy, data retention, deceptive advertising, billing practices, standard-setting and vertical foreclosure just to name a few.”

See why you should read it?

The Master Switch on Amazon.com

Design meets disability Graham Pullin MIT Press

Pullin, G. (2009). Design meets disability. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

A powerful, important book. Eyeglasses made the switch from shameful medical appliance, which is how the British National Health Service labeled them, to revered fashion item, so much so that people who didn’t need glasses would wear them anyway. If eyeglasses can do it, why not hearing aids, wheelchairs, or walkers? Change stigmas into desirables. Moreover, as the proponents of universal design have long proclaimed, meaningful design aids everyone.

Consider the visually impaired - which means you, yes you with the perfect eyesight. If you are in a really tedious, but important meeting, do you dare sneak a look at your wristwatch or phone? No: you have to look as if you are paying full attention. You are visually impaired. So why not a timepiece that gently vibrates the time to you? All of us have impairments at one time or another: why not design for them, helping both ourselves and those who have them permanently. But because we are all impaired one way or another. As we grow older, through both accident and age, all of us will accumulate changes in our abilities, so why not embrace the designs that help us? Make them fashion accessories, make them objects of pride.

This is a powerful book, for not only does it send a strong, welcome message, but it does so with elegance, complete with wonderful photographs aimed at stimulating the imagination and the creative mind. Not all the illustrations are about disabilities. Not all disabilities are disabilities.

Design Meets Disability on Amazon.com


Why the West rules -- for now Ian Morris Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Morris, I. (2010). Why the West rules— for now: the patterns of history, and what they reveal about the future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A very important book. If you liked Jared Diamond’s books (e.g., Guns, Germs and Steel, or Collapse), you will definitely like this. It builds upon Diamond’s geographical analysis of the growth of civilization, but it goes far beyond, into a cultural history and set of analyses of what is yet to come.

There is even a video: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/classics/cgi-bin/web/news/ian-morriss-new-book-why-west-rules-now-video

The first part of the book (Part I) is presents a grand overview. The last part of the book (Part III) is critically important. For most of us at least, this is where the most important material resides. The middle part (Part II) is for those who like all the minutiae of history from the beginning of life on earth till today. I recommend a rapid skim.

Note that although I recommend skipping part II, it is important for Morris. This is where he establishes the basic framework for his analysis. But I found it tedious.

So read parts I and III. As for part II, decide for yourself. But read the book: This is where the world is moving. It will impact your life.

Link to Why the West Rules—for Now on Amazon.com


Designing media Bill Moggridge MIT Press

Moggridge, B. (2010). Designing media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Here is what i said on the back cover, and I can think of no better way of recommending this wonderful book.

“The ways in which media are conceived, formed, and distributed have long undergone change, but now they are in full revolution. There is nobody better than Bill Moggridge to shed an illuminating beam upon the people behind these changes: not the technologists, but the writers, artists, musicians, editors, publishers, and dreamers who are changing our perceptions of the possible. Moggridge is a master of the interview - getting to the core and then collecting and distilling the essence in brief, insightful vignettes. This book is fun to peruse but even more worthy of thorough digestion, rumination, and reflection.”

Designing Media on Amazon.com


Nonobject Branko Lukic and Barry Katz MIT Press

Lukic, B., & Katz, B. (2011). Nonobject. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. http://nonobjectbook.com/

This is a visual exploration of space and design, of the interstices between object and space, of .. well, it is just plain fun. But don’t just look at the pictures, tantalizing though they may be. It is the text (by Barry Katz) that illuminates and penetrates the mystery behind the rendered objects (designed by Branko Lukic). Do explore the website as well. And start with the foreword by Bill Moggridge to get you into the right frame of mind — that is, playful, yet thoughtful.

The book is available both in traditional printed form - a beautiful, tastefully done execution by MIT Press - and also as an iPad application: both can be explored on the website. For the iPad, Lukic and Katz have explored the power of dynamic media, revealing new dimensions of nonobjects. Comparing the two versions, print and electronic media, also provides a lesson in understanding why electronic books have a far richer potential than static, print books could ever even imagine. So nonobject provides an important lesson about the future of publishing, as well as being a wonderful design study.

NONOBJECT on Amazon.com

Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation Steven Johnson Riverhead Books

Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation. New York: Riverhead Books.

Steven Johnson, prolific writer on science, argues that there are four quadrants of innovation split into, you guessed it, a two-by-two matrix with the dimensions Individual to Network and Market to Non-Market. He labels these 1 - 4 (which makes it really hard to remember which quadrant he is talking about. If only he had used mnemonically sound abbreviations).

This is an important addition to the works on where and how innovation develops and where it thrives.

Johnson argues that innovation originally came from quadrant 1, with independent, market-driven entrepreneurs, but that it is rapidly moving to quadrant 4, non market driven, created by networks of workers. As he puts it (in a footnote):

The magic square is the fourth one: that of decentralized, non-market environments. This is a combination that does not easily fit the standard boxes of capitalism and socialism. Yet in recent years, this quadrant has been a hothouse of innovation, thanks in large part to the open architecture of the internet.

If you read Doctorow’s novel, Makers, this is precisely where Doctorow places all his action: in the open-source, networked community. But Doctorow has his characters conflicted between the desirability of market versus non-market goals and practices. In part, he concludes, one cannot avoid the market.

Link to Where Good Ideas Come From on Amazon.com

The checklist manifesto. Atul Gawande Metropolitan Books

Gawande, A. (2010). The checklist manifesto: how to get things right. New York: Metropolitan Books.

A strong argument for a simple, yet powerful tool that can help reduce the incidents of error, accidents, injuries, and deaths: checklists. Extremely successful in commercial aviation, their use in other safety-critical applications is surprisingly controversial. Experts scorned them: “Are you implying I don’t know my job?” (The correct response is, “we know you know your job, but you are human working in an environment with many interruptions, distractions, and complexities. Even if the chance of an error is one in a million, given the billions of people in the world, that is not a good enough number: try it, you may be surprised by its value. And even if you don’t need it, if you use them, you will set a positive example for all those people who do.”)

This book makes a strong case for the adoption and use of checklists. Its major focus is on medicine, but the lessons apply everywhere.

Easy to read, powerful in its message.

The Checklist Manifesto on Amazon.com

Makers Cory Doctorow Tor

Doctorow, C. (2009). Makers. New York: Tor. Download the book (legally) from his website: http://craphound.com/makers/download/

Why a science fiction book? Because Doctorow is one of those deep thinkers who shed light on the future developments of our society and its technology. Doctorow shows the power of inexpensive 3D printers coupled with reclaimed discarded gadgets. While at it he lampoons mega-corporations, the profit motive, the business models that mean that novel ideas can command premium prices until all the imitators produce their own knockoffs at lower and lower prices, either because they have cheaper labor, figured out more efficient manufacturing or design, or are simply les greedy. Then, either one wages a death spiral of continuing lower prices toward unprofitability or it is time to get out and invent something even newer and better. But why? It is in answering the why that the book enters its most important phase: Why not use this creativity and powerful technology to help those who need it the most? Or better yet, to give people the tools to help themselves.

Doctorow describes the book like this:

Makers … is about people who hack hardware, business-models, and living arrangements to discover ways of staying alive and happy even when the economy is falling down the toilet. Weirdly, I wrote it years before the current econopocalypse, as a parable about the amazing blossoming of creativity and energy that I saw in Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash, after all the money dried up.

He puts this new phase of creativity and energy in Florida. Silicon Valley is old and jaded. The VCs have sucked the creativity out. The hot new developments no longer need a central location or the heavy overhead of VC bondage. Why not Florida, or for that matter, anyplace in the world. All that is required is the courage to try new things, to explore, to fail - and fail often — and to learn from the failures. The hardest part of this is to change the culture to encourage the sort of creative exploration that rewards creative failure with the opportunity to try again, but even bigger, even better, learning from the past while forging the future.

Makers on Amazon.com

Stories of modern technology failures and cognitive engineering successes Nancy Cooke and Frank Durso CRC Press
Cooke, N. J., & Durso, F. T. (2008). Stories of modern technology failures and cognitive engineering successes. Boca Raton: CRC Press. 

A fascinating set of stories illustrating how the lack of attention to the needs and capabilities of people can lead technological systems to disaster. Read the book to learn the fascinating stories of what can go wrong once complex systems are deployed without appropriate consideration to the needs and capabilities of people during their design.

  

This is a good book: I highly recommend it. Engaging, illustrative, and important. But it is the book that inspired me to say during a recent talk to the National Academies committee on Human-System Integration that it showed that HIS had not been successful. I said:

 

“In preparation for this talk I read Nancy Cooke and Frank Durso’s book “Stories of Modern Technology Failure and Cognitive Engineering Successes.” It is an excellent book, but after I finished it, I was feeling even more discouraged than when I had started. Why am I so discouraged by a book that glorifies the successes? Because the successes should have been unnecessary. They were rescues.”  


(see the text of my talk at: Why Human Systems Integration Fails (And Why the University Is the Problem). and the video at HSI Presentation by Donald Norman.)




Security Engineering Ross Anderson Wiley
Anderson, R. (2008). Security engineering: a guide to building dependable distributed systems (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Pub. 

Security is a critical element of our lives in this interconnected world of invisible computers and sensors. Moreover, the real security issues are not technical, they are people-centered. We must design better security with attention to how people actually behave, otherwise we all will defeat the security in order to get on with our lives.


I’ve written about this:

Ross Anderson understands these issues well, and in this mighty, very readable tome, he explains both the technology and also the ways that people can get around it and sneak in. Think your system is safe and secure? Think you will never fall for some scam or phishing attack? Think again: then read this book.I’m incredibly impressed that one person could produce such a thorough coverage. Moreover, he makes the stuff easy and enjoyable to read. I find it just as entertaining — and far more useful — than novels (and my normal science fiction). When I first got it in the mail, I said to myself “I’m never going to read all of that.” But once I started reading I just kept going and going. Fantastic: well done. Now, let’s hope that all those in charge of security for information technology will also read the book and heed the lessons.


I’m biased: Ross called me up one day when he was visiting Palo Alto (he normally resides in the UK) and we spent a delightful afternoon discussing these issues.

Design-driven innovation: changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean Verganti, Roberto Harvard Business Press

Verganti, R. (2009). Design-driven innovation: changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. http://www.designdriveninnovation.com

The more you believe that human-centered design is important, the more you need to read this book.

 

“Want to be radical? Forget user-centered innovation.”  Hmm, sounds like something I would say, but in this case it isn’t me, it is Roberto Verganti, author of “Design-driven innovation.”  Verganti argues for a forgotten dimension in products: meaning. The traditional view is technology driven, with most innovation being small, incremental changes and occasional large, dramatic jumps. I have argued that human-centered design is useful for incremental changes, but not for the large, radical transformations (Norman, 2010). Verganti agrees, but adds a critically important new dimension to the argument: meaning.

 

Products within existing categories and constructed from existing technologies can undergo incremental changes, again driven by human-centered design, but they can also undergo radical transformation in meaning: these are design-driven.  Thus, Apple’s iPod was a revolution in meaning, not technology. Similarly, Alessi’s development of cute, fun corkscrews and other kitchen items caused a radical transformation of that field, but did not require technological changes. Swatch redefined the meaning of watches, creating a radical revolution.

 

The big wins, of course, are where we combine radical technological innovation with radical meaning innovation. These have to be driven both by technological innovations, so they are technology driven, as well as by meaning revolutions, in which case they are also design driven. Wii harnessed the radical technological revolution in sensors with a radical change in the meaning of a video game, to great success.

 

So what is the role of human-centered design (also known as user-centered)?  Once the radical change has taken place, then HCD is essential for the continual refinement and improvement that marks incremental enhancement of product and meaning. But for radical change? Forget it.

 

For more information, see the website http://www.designdriveninnovation.com/.


Link to book at Amazon.com

Norman, D. A. (2010). Technology first, needs last: the research-product gulf. interactions, 17(2), 38-42. http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1343  (The pre-publication version, almost identical, is on this website at Technology first, needs last.

Two Books on Technology: "The Nature of Technology" & "Technology Matters" Brian Arthur & David Nye

Arthur, W. B. (2009). The nature of technology: what it is and how it evolves. New York: Free Press.

Nye, D. E. (2006). Technology matters: questions to live with. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Technology is important to all of us, and it is critical to understand the role it plays in society. Society, culture, human behavior and technology lay a complex intertwined role together, each mutually influencing the other, so the evolution of each is affected by the evolution of the others. Both these two recent books are valuable. Brian Arthur is an economist who has contributed much to our understanding of technology and product success. But I was disappointed in this book, which I considered a lightweight essay, not up to his usual standards. Nye’s book, on the other hand, is deep and thoughtful, with a much deeper analysis of all that ails us. I particularly am fond of this quote from Chapter 1 of Nye’s book: “Necessity is often not the mother of invention. In many cases, it surely has been just the opposite. When humans possess a tool, they excel at finding new uses for it. The tool often exists before the problem to be solved. Latent in every tool are unforeseen transformations.”

Arthur makes the same point when he points out that phenomena drive technologists and scientists, and from phenomena we get technologies, from technologies we get products, and from products we get needs. (Actually, I suspect I am mixing three sources together here: Arthur, Nye, and my own thinking - see my essay for Interactions Magazine, Technology First, Needs Last.)

Links to these books at Amazon.com: Brian Arthur: The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. David Nye: Technology Matters: Questions to Live With

The Lie Detectors Ken Alder New York: Free Press

Alder, K. (2007). The lie detectors: the history of an American obsession. New York: Free Press.

Many scientists and tinkerers are driven to discover a machine that will tell us when someone is lying. Unfortunately, many have claimed success, sufficiently so that the machine called a “lie detector” is in common use in police stations, government agencies, and even by some company employment agencies. The lack of scientific evidence for their accuracy is irrelevant. The report by the National Academies saying they were worthless also does not slow them down. And even today, scientists rush to use detection of facial expressions, micro-moods, voice tremors, and neurological measurements to detect when people lie, despite all the evidence that shows that at best these machines reflect emotional state, which is not the same as lying. Seasoned liars can lie their way through the tests. Nervous, non-confident individuals can fail even while telling the truth, in some cases found guilty in trial, even though they were innocent.

How does this happen? The story is a fascinating one: Ken Alder, a historian of science at Northwestern University tells it wonderfully. Highly recommended.

Link to this book at Amazon.com: The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession

The measure of all things Ken Alder New York: Free Press

Alder, K. (2002). The measure of all things: the seven-year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world. New York: Free Press.


Measurement is of critical importance to science, but as Ken Alder shows in this informative book, scientific activities cannot be separated from the personalities of those involved and the political events of the times. Alder is a historian of technology at Northwestern University who writes of important scientific events with an easy to read simplicity that makes the story fascinating as well as a deep examination of the issues.

This story tells of the quest to measure the circumference of the earth by a laborious effort of physical surveying by triangulation from visible site to visible site the from Northern France to Spain (and then basically multiplying by the appropriate factor). The goal was to determine the distance with great accuracy, allowing the meter to be defined as as one ten-millionth the distance from the equator to the North Pole. All these events took place just prior to, during, and after the French revolution which greatly interfered with the quest. Moreover, the task was quite a bit more difficult than had been initially thought, and not all the measurements ended up being consistent with one another. So some fudging of data resulted and supposedly open data collection sets were kept secret. Lots of people got into the act, even Napoleon.

If you ever wondered about the origins of the metric system this book helps provide some of the intrigue and background. You might also note that the metric calendar (10 months) and the metric clock (ten hours with 100 minutes to the hour and 10 seconds to the minute) did not survive.

Pointer to the book at Amazon.com: The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World

Design: History, theory, and practice of product design Bürdek, B. E. Boston, MA: Birkhauser-Publishers for Architecture

Bürdek, B. E. (2005). Design: History, theory, and practice of product design (1st English ed.). Boston, MA: Birkhauser-Publishers for Architecture.

The best book on the history of modern design I have read. Thorough, detailed, complete. Covers everything: architecture, products, services, software from the Romans (briefly) to today. I learned tremendously. I first read the book on my electronic book reader (a Kindle) but the many excellent illustrations are critical to understanding the text, and they are pretty horrid on the Kindle, so I also got the printed book. Big, heavy, expensive - and worth every cent. (I am briefly mentioned a few times, including one paragraph which has my current favorite quote about my work: “Today his ideas about what he calls human-centered development are widely accepted, even if designers and engineers still come up with wildly different interpretations of what he actually meant” (p. 414).

Link to book at Amazon.com

Standards and their stories Lampland, M., & Star, S. L. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Lampland, M., & Star, S. L. (2009). Standards and their stories: how quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

I sat down to read the book, read the first page, and paused while my face broke into a smile and a comfortable warm feeling came over my body. Yup, this was going to be a great book. Further reading confirmed the impression. Standards rule our lives. Yeah, standards, that dull, frustrating, topic studied by “The Society of People Interested in Boring Things.” But this book proves that far from being dull, the stories behind standards are interesting, insightful, and revealing of the workings of bureaucracy.

Standards are essential for different stuff made by different companies in different countries to work well together. Whether it is bananas or chocolate, application forms for terrorist training, or the sizes of people’s rear ends (critical for airline seats), standards are essential part of life today (all these are covered in the book). This engaging book serves several purposes. It explains much of the history, rationale, and politics of standards. It shows why they have huge social impact, far beyond what most of us realize, often far beyond what was intended. And best of all, it is fun to read.

Link to book at Amazon.com

Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die Heath, C., & Heath, D. Random House

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.

I taught a reading course on design to Northwestern’s Kellogg MBA students. The most popular book of all was this one by the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, “Made to stick.” People were applying the ideas in their class presentations even before they had finished reading it, it was that effective. After the book, the students threw away their bullet-point slides and started telling stories. Their talks became more enjoyable, more memorable, and, as a result, more effective. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. Their fellow students and professors objected at first, stating that they were deviating from tradition. “Thank goodness,” I say. Afterwards, students reported that these same people came up to them and said “wow, best talk of the class.”

So, if you want to do away with boring, dull, meaningless talks that do nothing except kill everyone’s time - especially that of the nervous, overwrought presenter, buy this book by the gross: hand it out to your friends, employees, bosses, and professors. Hey, we do interesting stuff: our talks should be just as interesting! (You can find an excellent summary of their ideas as well as an excerpt from their book at http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0728/2006046467-s.html .  

Link to the book at Amazon.com
Sudjik: The language of things Deyan Sudjic W. W. Norton

Here is the blurb I wrote for the back cover of this book.  It is already available in the UK and will be relased in the United States in 2009.  Sudjic is the director of the Design Museum in London (one of my favorite museums).

 

How do I sum up this book? “Witty and sophisticated,” or is it “seriously funny.” A deep penetrating look at the ever-perilous battle among the competing forces of art, fashion, and practicality that designers face. Sudjic examines the role of design in culture, society, and its continuing battle with art, neatly sandwiching in a marvelous treatment of luxury and fashion. Difficult to read because I was laughing so much, I kept losing my place.

Pointer to book at Amazon.com:
The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects

Design Journals

I am often asked - and I often myself wonder - for the names of high-quality research journals in the design field. Oh, there are lots of design magazines with pretty pictures of products, ID Magazine comes to mind along with Innovation, the quarterly publication of the Industrial Designers Society of America (only available to IDSA members), as well as occasional articles in many technology and business magazines, but these are mostly pretty pictures and glowing text without much depth or substance.

The two major quality design journals that I know of are Design Issues and Design Studies, but these are only available by subscription. In addition to the long established journals in design and related fields (e.g., human-computer interaction), I’d like to welcome one new, truly excellent journal, The International Journal of Design, edited by Lin-Lin Chen, Dean of the College of Design at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. This is available on-line, free.

(I’m not going to discuss the many excellent HCI journals because these are well established, well known, but at the end of this note I provide two pointers to excellent lists and descriptions of them.)

The International Journal of Design has amazed me with the high-quality of its articles. The main purpose of this note is to welcome and recommend this new source of high-quality, refereed articles on design. (Note: I am on the editorial board, but I don’t take any credit for the excellence of these issues.)

Interactions magazine, the official magazine of the CHI organization, is high-quality and always interesting, although not scholarly . The articles are reviewed but not refereed. So think of them as opinion pieces, but written by really good people. The editors are excellent. For example, they often reject my pieces, scolding me until I do better. Finally, many (but not all) of their articles are freely available on the internet. Finally. Their host organization, ACM, doesn’t seem to understand this internet publishing business. They still think it is all about money, even though they are a non-profit, scientific organization. (My friends in the ACM will rush to tell me that “non-profit” does not mean “losing money.”)

I am certain I have left out valuable resources. Please write to me with suggestions (don at AskDon dot jnd dot org)

Summary hotlinks: items marked with * require subscription or payment

Design Issues *

Design Studies *

ID Magazine *

Innovation *

Interactions magazine

International Journal of Design

Journals in the field of Human Computer Interaction are listed in the HCI bibliography site and also on Prof. Matthias Rauterberg’s site at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

HCI Bibliography list of journals

Rauterberg’s list of journals

About Don Norman & The Nielsen Norman Group Contact Don Norman Site Map web feed

http://www.jnd.org Copyright 2007-2010 © Donald A. Norman. All rights reserved.