Technology & Society

A two-part essay: 1. why recycling is too complex for me (and perhaps everyone)to understand; 2. Why recycling is the wrong answer to the problem of waste.

We advocate a multi-step approach toward major societal issues, combining community-driven wisdom with knowledge of domain experts. Add an opportunistic, incremental approach to large problems, followed by continual attention to the fundamental principles of human-centered design.

A new talk,"21st Century Design: Addressing Major Societal Issues." I discuss what we in the UC San Diego Design Lab call "Complex Sociotechnical Systems." This "essay" is just the URLs of a 50 second video and the PDF of the slides.

A UX Cake podcast "Design a Better World," hosted by Leigh Allen-Arredondo. What did I talk about? Mainly why, and how, designers and researchers in our discipline should be changing the world.

In 1963, Dennis Gabor, Nobel laureate for his invention of the holograph, said "The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented" (Gabor, 1963). This statement has become a mantra in recent times, attributed to many who are simply rephrasing Gabor. Alas, the slogan, wonderful though it...

Distractibility isn't a human problem; it's a design problem, writes usability expert Don Norman. We need to reverse the normal technological strategy of asking people to fill in for gaps in machine performance. Instead, we should require machines to fill in for gaps in human performance. After a...

As automation and artificial intelligence technologies develop, we need to think less about the design of human-machine interfaces and more about the design of human-machine teamwork....

The technological requirements for self-driving cars are extremely complex, and although we are now able to succeed in a very high percentage of the situations, those last few percentages contain the most difficult, the most daunting challenges. As automation gets better and better, then the prob...

new essay on LinkedIn: http://goo.gl/l4oWi0 . When there are accidents, injuries, and deaths the first reaction is often to claim "human error," blaming the last person to have touched the controls. That is why the problems persist: we punish the innocent and do not remedy the underlying causes...

It's nice to see predictions upheld, but in terms of practical value, getting the timing right is as important as getting the idea right. ...

Whenever you see something labeled "smart" or "intelligent," be assured that it is actually rather stupid. It is time to for the designers and engineers of this coming automated world and take heed from the lessons learned over the years in the field of Human-Systems Integration, in studies of au...

How can we get the batteries on our smart phones to last the entire day? Make them bigger. Eliminate phone anorexia. The evil is the cult of thinness. Phone Anorexia. Want to make batteries last beyond the day? Make them bigger. it is that simple. Add a few millimeters of thickness, 1/8th of an ...

Can wearable devices be helpful? Absolutely. But they can also be horrid. It all depends upon whether we use them to focus and augment our activities or to distract. It is up to us, and up to those who create these new wearable wonders to decide which it is to be. ...

(An essay for Misc Magazine.) Maybe I am a gadget. That would certainly explain a lot of things. A quick search of the internet for the definition of gadget yields two meanings: 1. A small device that performs or aids a simple task; 2. A small device that appears useful but is often unnecessary ...

An expanded version of my welcoming address to the "Workshop on Building the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation." The conference was to address the demise of manufacturing in the US. I tell two stories. The first is about a startup (I'm on the board) that now manufactures in China. Why...

Steelcase celebrated its 100th anniversary by asking 100 people to write essays about their dreams for the next 100 years. It is an impressive list of people and i am honored to be one of them. My essay, my dream is "the rise of the small." Here is the start: I dream of the power of individuals...

There is a technological revolution in the air, not because new principles and technologies have been discovered, but because so many past technologies have simultaneously reached a state of maturity that they can be incorporated into everyday technology. These cusps in technology produce new op...

I have seen the future, and if it turns out the way it is headed, I am opposed. I fear our free and continual access to information and services is doomed to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity. It is time to rethink the present, for it determines the future. ...

My book "The Invisible Computer" explains the "why" of Information appliances – Eric Bergman's book, "Information Appliances and Beyond", explains the "how." This is Chapter One from the book....

<p class="MsoNormal">Interaction design is about interfaces, which means it is about synchronizing the events of different systems, about memories, buffers, queues and waiting rooms. Waiting is an unavoidable component of interfaces, an unavoidable part of life. Just as dirt collects in crevices,...

Many of our clever ethnographic and field methods are designed to find unmet needs. You know what? Most are far better off if they stay unmet....

It has become commonplace to rail against the evils of PowerPoint talks; you know, those dull, boring never-ending ordeals where the speaker &mdash; or should I say "reader" &mdash; displays what appears to be a never-ending progression of slides, each with numerous bulleted points, sometimes co...

<span>The automobile industry is badly in need of guidance on human factors. Excellent people already work in the companies, but they suffer the problems faced within the consumer electronics and computer industries over the past few decades. This is an important arena, one where human-centered d...

<p>Draft version of Chapter 1 of my new book, tentatively titled <em>The Design of Future Things</em>. (In press: Basic Books. Expected publication: 2007.)&nbsp; This chapter is called &quot;Cautious cars and cantankerous kitchens.&quot; Posted December 9, 2006 as a Microsoft Word file.</p><p>...

Cambridge, UK. 1 April 2006. An old dream of cartographers has finally been realized through flat-panel displays and small, portable computational devices. For centuries, cartographers have dreamed of full-scale maps, that is, a map with a scale of 1:1, so that 1 Km. of the map would represent 1 ...

April 1. Hampstead, MA. Motorist Peter Newone said he felt as if a nightmare had just ended. Newone, 53, was driving his newly purchased luxury car when he entered the traffic circle in the city center around 9 AM yesterday, Friday. The car was equipped with the latest safety features, including ...

<p class="MsoNormal">Forbes.com published a series of articles on &quot;the 20 tools which have had the biggest impact on human civilization.&quot; They asked me to be on their advisory board. </p><p class="MsoNormal">&quot;Writing,&quot; I proclaimed. &quot;The invention of writing is probably t...

Erin Massey of the <a title="Chicago Tribune (registration required)" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0512260239dec26,1,484946.story?coll=chi-techtopheds-hed" target="_self"><em>Chicago Tribune</em> newspaper (registration required)</a> has written a nice article on the importa...

As automation increasingly takes its place in industry it is often blamed for causing harm and increasing the chance of human error when failures occur. I propose that the problem is not the presence of automation, but rather its inappropriate design. The problem is that the operations under norm...

Wonderful user experience is important, but neither necessary nor sufficient. If the company fails, it doesn&rsquo;t matter how good the experience was. For us, as a discipline, to be successful, we need to understand the entire picture. Our job is to make the company succeed....

My home is littered with technologies that require conitnual attention. The problem is not just with today's favorite culprit -- the computer -- even my water filter requires change every 6 months. If every device only needed attention once a year, I would still be fixing, maintaining, or adjusti...

As I wrote "The Invisible Computer," I was struck by a paradox. On the one hand, there is very substantial agreement that ease of use and understandability are important. Similarly, good industrial design, simple, short documentation, and convenient, pleasing products are superior. I wondered why...

To date, the way we interact with computers is incredibly unimaginative and limited. Basically, we sit in front of the box looking and listening, pointing and typing, and occasionally talking. Will this change? Of course, but I believe the change will come about primarily by changes in the comput...

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY ADDISON WESLEY. NOW OUT OF PRINT. 1 [http://0.0.0.0:8000/dn.mss/turn_signals_-_table.html#ft1note] TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. I Go to a 6th

CHAPTER SIX OF TURN SIGNALS ARE THE FACIAL EXPRESSION OF AUTOMOBILES1 The delights of having information ever-present are amazingly seductive. Wouldn't it be nice to have a personal assistant, small and

CHAPTER 15 OF TURN SIGNALS ARE THE FACIAL EXPRESSION OF AUTOMOBILES 1 How come some people always know just how they got sick? And how come they always expect me to know how

CHAPTER 16 OF TURN SIGNALS ARE THE FACIAL EXPRESSION OF AUTOMOBILES 1 Chapter Note: Please do not think that because most of my examples are from aviation that air travel is unsafe or

A graduate student of mine, worrying about how to teach the principles of good design to undergraduates, suggested that we should use writing as an example. "We should teach them," he

CHAPTER ONE OF TURN SIGNALS ARE THE FACIAL EXPRESSION OF AUTOMOBILES1 I went to a sixth grade play. It was a small play, at a small school. Only the sixth grade was involved,

I flew from Munich to Chicago in a brand new Lufthansa Airbus 340. (the 340-300 model, for those who keep track of such things). Ah, Lufthansa has gone to great lengths to improve their business class fittings. Indeed each seat comes with a 14 page manual. (Oops, 14 pages? That should be warning ...

Adding more security and safety measures can actually decrease security and safety. This is for four reasons: one technical, the other three a result of psychology.</p> <p> 1. Common-mode problems <br> 2. The "shirking" problem (also known to psychologists as "bystander apathy"). <br> 3. The over...

I suppose I ought to be pleased. The phrase "Emotional Design" is pervasive, with consumer products of all forms touting the virtues of the emotions. Beauty is contextual. For the objects in our home that we must live with, the context matters. All these new, spectacular designs for television ...

We have truly reached the era of "The Invisible Computer." In the office and home, automobile and school, embedded computers make our lives more enjoyable. We face a fascinating future, with much exciting new technology, many new information appliances. We should not have to know how they work. ...

Robots are coming, but what does this mean to ordinary folks? First of all, don't believe all the hype. Three likely directions for the future are entertainment, home appliances, and education. We can start with today's existing devices and slowly add on intelligence, manipulative ability, and fu...

We are in real danger of a consumer backlash against annoying technologies. We already have seen the growth of mobile-phone free zones, of prohibition against phone use, camera use, camera phones, in all sort of public and private places. The mobile phone has been shown to be a dangerous distract...

As we construct artificial devices with ever more power, even more intelligence, perhaps we will have to make them mimic natural evolution. Technology slowly evolves, not in the same way as the natural evolution of life, but through the artificial evolution of design. But in many ways, the evol...

It is time for technology to be quieter, calmer, and less visible. Let us make the 21st century be the time to hide the technology, to let it all become invisible. Just as the sewers and water pipes of the homes are invisible, yet still essential; or just as the electric wiring and electric motor...