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Being Analog: An Interview with Donald Norman
 Okay, Don -- you're no technophobe. What's your gripe with personal computers? Simple: PCs give technology a bad name. All that complexity, all that time wasted trying to install new software, rebooting, reconfiguring. They are a wonderful boon for the publishing industry -- all those books on how to use them. It doesn't have to be this way. Trying to make a single machine be all things to all people, all over the world, is a recipe for disaster -- or to be more precise, for what we have today. An industry where the very business model guarantees complexity. Each new version has to have more features than the last in an attempt to convince customers to buy new models, to "upgrade." It is the only industry where it is important to make customers unhappy with what they have just bought so they will buy the upgrade. Either that or the new products have to introduce incompatibilities, so customers are forced to change even if they were perfectly happy before. There is a solution, the information appliance, designed with people in mind, designed to fit human activities. Make the technology fit the people, not the other way around. You say that a general purpose machine is always going to be more complex than one designed for a single purpose, which makes sense. Still, do we really want six different devices to do the work we're now doing with PCs? Yes, so? Why does that bother you? How many devices do you have in your kitchen, your workshop? How many different devices on your desk? The most important point is that if this is done properly, it won't feel like separate devices. You won't notice them: you will simply do the work where and how you want. Today, you have to take your work to the PC. In the future, we will do our work where we want to. Want examples of information appliances? Note the following list includes many things you don't think of as computers, which is just the point. The successful information appliance won't be thought of as a computer. So you won't notice you are using lots of them.
The trick is to build devices that match people's activities -- related sets of tasks. How many appliances do we need in our lives? Who knows -- how many electric motors do you need? I bet you can't answer that, yet you use 50 or more in your home. You don't care how many there are, as long as they provide value and don't get in your way. That's how it should be with the computers in our lives. Computers and motors are infrastructure: they should be invisible. The invisible computer: I won't even know how many I have. I won't even care. You fault the industry's business model for the PC's complexity. But surely simplicity and ease of use are goals of software designers? Huh? Maybe on your planet... I'm guessing you object to some of the very fundamental notions of PC technology, such as files and menus, as irrelevant to consumers' needs... Yup. Who needs files? I want to do my tasks. Write letters, read things. Sure I need to be able to find things I did in the past, but why do I need the arbitrary, hierarchical file structure? That's not how the mind works. If you examine how people make use of folders, you see they don't do a very good job. Why should we be stuck with this arbitrary structure inherited from the whims of computer scientists who cared about machine efficiency, not about human niceties? Would creeping complexity be a problem with information appliances? Creeping featurism is a disease that results from today's business model: force the consumer to upgrade whether they want to or not. Appliances just work. They need not be upgraded. Different manufacturers can play in the same space. Some will offer very complex, rich devices that do a variety of tasks. Some will offer simple devices, specialized for specific users. The consumer can choose. I might want a more complex multiple purpose device when I travel, but numerous special purpose, simpler devices for home. If we can have open standards for information so that the output of any appliance can be used by any other one, then everyone can compete in the marketplace. Let the consumers decide just what mixtures of tasks and what level of complexity they wish. My prediction is that they will settle upon a large set of choices. Would you identify the basic steps of a human-centered development process? Yes, human-centered product development starts by studying the users for whom the device is intended, in the field where they normally work, study, and play. Do what I call "rapid ethnography." Then, using rapid prototyping procedures, design, mockup, and test -- in hours or days -- to find out how people respond to the product idea. Repeat this process until you settle upon an acceptable result (this whole cycle is actually quite fast). Then write the manual -- make it short and simple -- as simple as possible. Use the manual and the prototypes as the design specs for the engineers. The whole process can be done more quickly than some of the methods in use today. Today we test for usability after the product is done. Long ago industry learned you can't get quality through testing: you have to build quality in at every step of the process. The result is faster production at higher quality. The same story holds for the total user experience: user experience is far more than usability. It is the entire relationship between the consumer and the product. Human-centered product development is simple in concept, but foreign to the minds of most technology companies. So, as the title of Chapter 10 points out, if you want human-centered development, you probably have to reorganize your company. The Invisible Computer deconstructs some fashionable research agendas, including network computers, speech recognition systems, portable and handheld devices, and intelligent agents. Why are these not the solution? Because they represent the power of wishful thinking over reality. Everyone always wants the simple solution -- the silver bullet that will make those werewolves go away. If only life were that simple. You urge the computer industry to "grow up," and your book tells them how to do that. But why would they -- especially big, profitable companies? Why not wait and see whether information appliances really turn out to be the answer? Technology companies are like adolescents, completely out of touch with reality. Why change? Because consumers are increasingly demanding it. In the youth of a technology, it is very exciting. Engineers are in charge. Customers demand more technology. There are high profits and high rates of growth. In mature technologies, the technology is a commodity -- it is taken for granted, Customers want value, quality, fun. Today's technology companies think they are young, in their youth. They aren't. The computer industry is over 50 years old. Wake up, companies: 50 years is not a teenager. Customers are demanding value and quality. You are not delivering. Technology companies are thrilled that roughly 45% of American homes have PCs. Well, I say they should be humbled: after 50 years, the computer is not in 55% of the homes. Those are pretty slow adoption rates. And many homes that do not have computers state that price is not the reason: they simply do not want it in their home lives. Know how much money companies lose on product support lines? A lot. Those aren't product support -- they are complaint lines. They are signs of bad product. It is time for a change: the consumers are ready. Grow up, technologists. What three pieces of advice would you give to the designers of new information technologies for the consumer market? Know your customer. Understand your customer. Design, develop, and produce products that fit the real needs of your customer. What three things would you tell the executives of computer companies? Take another look at your product process and at your company's reward structure. The product process is probably tailored to produce technology-centered designs. The reward structure is probably structured to prevent managers from changing their ways (this is inadvertent, but that doesn't make it any less true or less damaging). When I talk with executives, I find they readily understand my message. The problem is in middle management, but it is not their fault: their reward structure does not allow for change. Charge the service costs to the development team. Restructure the way the business is organized. (And now a shameless plug: that's what my consulting company is about -- helping executives understand how they need to change the corporate structure, reward process, and culture. See http://www.nngroup.com.) What do you predict for the PC in the next ten to twenty years? Will it disappear? The personal computer is a valuable technology for some people and purposes: I predict it will long be with us, especially for the technical uses for which it is so well suited. But for everyday people and every uses, I see it fading out of existence, to become invisible, built into our environment so as to support our activities without intruding upon them. How long will this take? It is starting now. I expect major impact well before ten years are up. And in twenty years, I expect the PC to be absent from most people's lives, although it will live on in specialized niches. These days "being digital" is esteemed a virtue, while refusing to make technology central to one's life appears willful and backward, if not downright suicidal. What's wrong with this ethic, and what would you like to see replace it? Life is not about technology. It is about accomplishment, about enjoyment, about a sense of belonging. Technology can enhance life, but only if it is our servant, not our master. People are analog. People are biological creatures. Digital may be fine for machines, but it isn't at all appropriate for people. We are tolerant of error -- digital machines are not. Digital machines are precise and accurate, people are not. Instead we are creative, resourceful, and tolerant. The proper technology enhances our virtues. The wrong technology forces us to behave in ways for which we are biologically unsuited.
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Advance praise
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