Cognition and emotion cannot be separated. Cognitive thoughts lead to emotions: emotions drive cognitive thoughts. The brain is structured to act upon the world, and every action carries with it expec...
Consistency in design is virtuous. It means that lessons learned with one system transfer readily to others. On the whole, consistency is to be followed. If a new way of doing things is only slightly...
The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is imbedd...
Cultural constraints are likely to change with time.
Designers should strive to minimize the chance of inappropriate actions in the first place by using affordances, signifiers, good mapping, and constraints to guide the actions. If a person performs an...
Effective memory uses all the clues available: knowledge in the world and in the head, combining world and mind. We have already seen how the combination allows us to function quite well in the world...
Even systems that do not use menus need to provide some structure: appropriate constraints and forcing functions, natural good mapping, and all the tools of feedforward and feedback. The most effectiv...
If only people would read the instructions, they say, everything would be all right.
In the absence of external information, people can let their imagination run free as long as the conceptual models they develop account for the facts as they perceive them. As
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.
Unless it is your ambition to become a nightclub performer and amaze people with great skills of memory, here is a simpler way to dramatically enhance both memory and accuracy: write things down. Writ...
When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers...
Yet surprisingly in this era of screen-based devices, paper tools are still enormously popular and effective, as the number of paper-based diaries and reminders indicates. The
Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptiblesignals of what can be done. Signifiers are of far more impor...
Beauty comes from conscious reflection and experience. It is influenced by knowledge, learning, and culture. Objects that are unattractive on the surface can give pleasure. Discordant music, for examp...
It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.
Once again, the designer should assume that people will be interrupted during their activities and that they may need assistance in resuming their operations.
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