Don Norman

Most companies compare features with their competition to determine where they are weak, so they can strengthen those areas. Wrong, argues Moon. A better strategy is to concentrate on areas where they are stronger and to strengthen them even more.

Was the development of tablets controlled by gestures revolutionary?

failure in the high-tech world of California is not considered bad

Engineers are trained to think logically. As a result, they come to believe that all people must think this way

Why are people having problems?” they wonder. “You are being too logical,” I say. “You are designing for people the way you would like them to be, not for the way they really are.”

e must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors

Designers need to focus their attention on the cases where things go wrong, not just on when things work as planned. Actually, this is where the most satisfaction can arise: when something goes wrong but the machine highlights the problems, then the person understands the issue, takes the proper actions, and the problem is solved. When this happens smoothly, the collaboration of person and device feels wonderful.

Feedback has to be planned. All actions need to be confirmed, but in a manner that is unobtrusive. Feedback must also be prioritized, so that unimportant information is presented in an unobtrusive fashion, but important signals are presented in a way that does capture attention

A conceptual model is an explanation, usually highly simplified, of how something works. It doesn’t have to be complete or even accurate as long as it is useful.

This simplified model is helpful for normal usage, but if the network connection to the cloud services is interrupted, the result can be confusing. Information is still on their screen, but users can no longer save it or retrieve new things: their conceptual model offers no explanation. Simplified models are valuable only as long as the assumptions that support them hold true.