taming hal - asaf degani
Recommended by a nice guy from TomTom at the Adaptive Path event in Amsterdam last year. Taming HAL is a great account of how automation is affecting people's lives, and the dangers that incorrect or confusing interfaces present to people's safety. Or their mental heath.
I particularly enjoyed the case studies of crashing planes and cruise ships running aground. Reminds me of The Design of Everyday Things, but more theoretical and more focused on 'big' products like medical instruments and autopilots. Degani also gives guidelines for how to ensure that the interfaces get better - how to make machine models that ensure that you don't overlook (and hide) certain states of the machine. (Skip the chapter about web interfaces, though, if you are in any way involved with the web. It's dated and not all that insightful any more, alas).
The book makes me wonder (not for the first time) why the hell the remote control problem still hasn't been solved by the television and DVD-machine people. On your bikes, interface designers at Sony and Panasonic and suchlikes! High time you come up with better things.
03-01-2008
