Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule
In the university, professors make up artificial problems. In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered. It is all too easy to see only the surface pr...
How do pilots remember? They transform the new knowledge they have just received into memory in the world, sometimes by writing, sometimes by using the airplane’s equipment. The design implication? Th...
Fire, yells someone in a theater. Immediately everyone stampedes toward the exits. What do they do at the exit door? Push. If the door doesn’t open, they push harder. But what if the door opens inward...
Design is successful only if the final product is successful—if people buy it, use it, and enjoy it, thus spreading the word. A design that people do not purchase is a failed design, no matter how gre...
Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.
Conventions are actually a form of cultural constraint, usually associated with how people behave. Some conventions determine what activities should be done; others prohibit or discourage actions. But...
Best mapping: Controls are mounted directly on the item to be controlled. • Second-best mapping: Controls are as close as possible to the object to be controlled. • Third-best mapping:...
Basically, it means that when searching for the reason, even after you have found one, do not stop: ask why that was the case. And then ask why again. Keep asking until you have uncovered the true und...
Ask Why? as many times as may be necessary to get to the root cause of the problem and then fix it so it can never occur again.
An interesting property of slips is that, paradoxically, they tend to occur more frequently to skilled people than to novices. Why? Because slips often result from a lack of attention to the task. Ski...
AFTER DINNER, WITH A GREAT FLOURISH, my friend Andrew brought out a lovely leather box. Open it, he said, proudly, and tell me what you think. I opened the box. Inside was a gleaming stainless-steel s...
A usable design starts with careful observations of how the tasks being supported are actually performed, followed by a design process that results in a good fit to the actual ways the tasks get perfo...
A story tells of Henry Ford’s buying scrapped Ford cars and having his engineers disassemble them to see which parts failed and which were still in good shape. Engineers assumed this was done to find...
A major cause of error is time stress. Time is often critical, especially in such places as manufacturing or chemical processing plants and hospitals. But even everyday tasks can have time pressures....
A device is easy to use when the set of possible actions is visible, when the controls and displays exploit natural mappings.
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. The
The real problem is that numerical correlations say nothing of people’s real needs, of their desires, and of the reasons for their activities. As a result, these numerical data can give a false impres...
Business that makes and sells durable goods faces a problem: As soon as everyone who wants the product has it, then there is no need for more.
Why do we need to know about the human mind? Because things are designed to be used by people, and without a deep understanding of people, the designs are apt to be faulty, difficult to use, difficult...