Contact:cdent@burningchrome.com
Norman, D. (1999). Chapter 4: Fitting the artifact to the person (p.
77-113). In _Things that make us smart_. Cambridge: Perseus Books.
Goodness how I loathe Norman sometimes. 36 pages to say that we need
to be concerned with the human when we create representations with
computers. Really? I did not know that Johnny.
A novel bit that did come of this chapter is an interesting paradox
presented by computers. In effective tools there is an easy to grasp
surface representation of the function and state of the tool. Complex
technology blows this because the relationship between the surface
representation and internal representation is very abstract. The
paradox is that the whole point of complex technology is to create
abstract representations. If we expose that nature we may make the
understanding of technology easier.
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