The Design on Everyday Things Ch-1 (My Notes On #2)

Chapter — 2: The Psychology of everyday actions

Quote of The Chapter

Eliminate the term human error. Instead, talk about communication and interaction: what we call an error is usually bad communication or interaction.

How people do things: The Gulfs of Execution and Evaluation

• When people attempt to operate something, they are faced with two tasks: Gulf of Execution; figuring out how it operates, and the Gulf of Evaluation; figuring out what happened based on their actions.

The seven stages of action

• There are two parts to an action: executing the action and then evaluating the results: doing and interpreting. Both execution and evaluation require understanding: how the items works and what results it produces. Both execution and evaluation can affect our emotional state.

• We bridge the two Gulfs with 7 stages of action:

1. Goal (Form the goal)
2. Plan (the action)
3. Specify (an action sequence)
4. Perform (the action sequence)
5. Perceive (the state of the world)
6. Interpret (the perception)
7. Compare (the outcome with the goal)

Human Cognition and Emotion

A useful approximate model of human cognition and emotion is to consider three levels of processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

1. Visceral:

• The most basic level of processing. It allows us to respond quickly and subconsciously, without conscious awareness or control. Ex: becoming tense in a high pressure situation.
• Visceral responses are completely subconscious. They are sensitive only to the current sense of things. It is about the immediate perception.

2. Behavioral:

• It is the home of learned skills, triggered by situations that match the appropriate patterns. Performing any skill that you’ve learnt without thinking about it. Ex: As babies it took us a lot of effort to learn to walk, but now we can perform this task without even thinking about it.
• Actions and analyses at this level are largely subconscious. While we are aware of our actions, we are often unaware of the details. You think of an action and behavioral level will handle all the details for you.
• Behavioral states are learnt. They make you feel in control when you can see clear results. But they also make you feel frustrated when something goes wrong. Especially so when there are no remedies or plausible reasons.

3. Reflective:

• It is the home of conscious cognition. This is where deep understanding develops, where reasoning and conscious decision-making take place.
• The highest level of emotions also come from the reflective level.
• Design must take place at all levels: visceral, behavioral and reflective.
• To a designer, reflective level is most important, as it can often be more important than reality. Experiences felt at the reflective level can create lasting impressions, both positive and negative.
• Now, Norman D. combines the 7 stages of action and 3 levels of processing.

Falsely Blaming yourself

• People try to find the causes for events. They tend to assign a causal relation whenever two thing occur in succession. This causal relationship can make them accept the blame for a design flaw.
• This self blaming can be explained by the phenomenon called learned helplessness. It refers to a situation where someone might experience repeated failure at a task. As a result, they deduce the task cannot be done by them: they are helpless.
• To counter learned helplessness, we use positive psychology:
• Don’t blame people when they fail to use your products properly.
• Take people’s difficulties as signifiers of where the product can be improved.
• Eliminate all error messages from electronic or computer systems. Instead, provide help and guidance.
• Make it possible to correct problem directly from help and guidance messages. Don’t impede progress — help make it smooth and continuous. Never make people start over.
• Assume that what people have done is partially correct, so if it is inappropriate, provide guidance that allows them to correct the problem and be on their way.
• Think positively, for yourself and for the people you interact with.
• Poorly designed Machines/tools/technologies shall always take the blame instead of humans. It is human nature to err, we are not precise and robotic. We are creative and imaginative. The tool should assist us in seamlessly resolving errors and continuing with the tasks.
• Remove the term human error and instead focus on tools that interact and communicate better.

The seven stages of action: Seven fundamental Design principles.

• Anyone using a product should always be able to determine the answer to the following questions:

1. What do I want to accomplish?
2. What are the alternative action sequences?
3. What action can I do now?
4. How do I do it?
5. What happened?
6. What does it mean?
7. Is this okay? Have I accomplished my goal?

• The information that helps answer the questions of executions is feedforward. It tells you **what you can do. It is accomplished by using signifiers, constraints, and mappings.
• The information that aids in understanding what has happened is feedback. It is accomplished by using explicit information about the impact of the action.
• The insight from 7 stages of action lead us to 7 fundamental design principles:

1. Discoverability
2. Feedback
3. Conceptual model
4. Affordances
5. Signifiers
6. Mappings
7. Constraints