Design: How Machines Can Defeat People

Blame the designers, not the users, says an expert

The lights dimmed in the university auditorium, the students' chatter subsided, and the professor from California, Psychologist Donald A. Norman, began his lecture. The topic: how people interact with things. The student in charge of showing Norman's slides pushed the control button, and crash! The tray shot out of the projector, fell onto the floor and disgorged all the slides. For 15 minutes Norman struggled to put them back in order. When he resumed his talk and the student began pressing the control button again, the slides refused to move the right way. The harder the student pressed to ensure that...

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