Norman makes me feel so much better about myself.
After reading this chapter, I realized, with great relief, that a lot of the times where I "failed" were, in fact, not failures at all. What really interests me is the way he separates "human error" and "product error". The psychology behind the woman's disappointment in herself after failing to open a cabinet, even after watching Norman jiggle the thing around a handful of ways, reminds me of the many times where I "caused" a machine to fail because I read the directions wrong. The essential point of having a manual is to make thing easier. However, there are many occasions where the manual makes things even more complicated.
The other sections of the chapter that delve into the minds of people as they use technology were also very interesting; the difference between "naive physics" being used to operate machinery rather than the Newtonian physics approach was amusing. His example of the thermostat perfectly illustrates the way we infer things work based on what we see, much like the process Aristotle used to make his theories.
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