Dear Don and all.
I appreciate Don's post as it concerns several important issues in a field,
which shows signs of quasi-science.
1. First issue and also an addition to my earlier post in response to
Gunnar, I find it relevant to point out that yes, to relay on intuition
demands profound experience in the field concerned, but no, the expression
'to appear natural and/or intuitive' creates wrong associations: either we
have enough experience to trust our intuition or we have not and have to
work through our design decision. This does of course not exclude intuition
helping us along. I am here talking about life experience, experiences from
adjoining fields etc. Especially in a multidisciplinary field like design,
we must allow for a diversity of experience to count. Studying for my PhD
thesis, I found it fascinating to note, that well-known designers rarely
when interviewed talk about how they work. They focus much more on the
experiences they assume have lead up to how they work today.
2. Second issue is about purely scientific books compared to books aimed at
assisting application and being accessible by practitioners, a type of
handbook. We need more of the latter: based on quality research but written
with the aim to transfer knowledge from academia into practice.
Best
Kristina
Kristina Börjesson
Research Associate
Central Saint Martins College
University of the Arts London
0044 7767 215992
[log in to unmask]
www.borjesson-mk.se
http://thefoundobject.canalblog.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Norman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 7:32 AM
Subject: Re: Intuition in design
I have to tear myself away from teaching about the design of services to go
back to my comments on intuition. Services are deep and complex: recursive.
They have a front stage and a back stage. People may or may not be involved
in services. One person's product is another person's service. It is a rich
and complex field. But this note is about something else. It is about
intuition.
Actually, this note is about how one justifies one's argument: what kind of
scientific literature do you use to back up your statements. I argue that
scientific statement require scientific backup, not secondary sources, not
even from talented writers. Citing Jerry Bruner's 50 year old paper doesn't
give me much confidence. Science doesn't stay still, so what Jerry said and
thought then doesn't mean much today.
Yes, today we believe that much subconscious operations are
pattern-recognition-like energy minimization systems, finding local minima
rapidly, in parallel. That is why experts do so much subconsciously and
quickly: they have developed tens of thousands of patterns that can be
matched.
It is wrong to equate intuitive with subconscious. That is equating a subset
with its superset. Sure, intuitive acts, by definition, are done without
conscious awareness, which, again by definition, means subconscious. But not
everything subconscious is what we mean by intuitive.
On intuitive design, a term I deplore. Intuition means actions that are
automatic, without conscious thought. To make something automatic requires
many hours of practice, the specific number depending upon the complexity of
the task. Yes, it is probably pattern recognition of a complex sort, perhaps
collapsing into a nearest-neighbor approach to matching patterns, dynamical
systems, attractor states. But this only works after the patterns have been
acquired -- that's what all those years of practice are about. We scientists
talk about relaxation processes, energy minimization, attractors, and other
terms. Some of us talk about pattern matching (related to case-based
reasoning, but more complex). It's a huge neural net, simultaneously doing
hill descent, learning along the way. That's today's theories. They will be
superseded as we learn more.
I have been accused of " making an oblique reference to the Gordon 'four
stages of competence" cycle.' " I have zero interest in doing so. Others
have recommended reading popular books, such as Gladwell.
I don't need a secondary source. I am making oblique references to the work
by cognitive scientists. Work, for example, that I did. Jerry (Bruner) wrote
that book 50 years ago. We have learned a lot in those 50 years. For a
scientist, to be told to read a 50 year old book for a contemporary
definition is weird. Even Jerry himself would laugh. For the record, I was
a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard
University, started by George Miller (the magical number 7 person) and Jerry
Bruner. I worked closely with both (but more with Miller). But what they
said then -- and what I wrote and believed then -- have changed radically in
the ensuing years. Science has made incredible advances. We have new tools,
new insights. The old ones provide the scaffolding, even as they were proved
wrong, misleading or even appropriate and helpful.
There is a major problem if you rely upon the knowledge published in the
popular press. There is a huge difference between what is published in
popular articles and in scientific journals and monographs. Gladwell is a
gifted journalist and writer, but he is not a scientist. He reports on other
people's work. He simplifies -- he has to. I read him. I like him. But I
also know the primary sources and the scientists he reports upon, so I also
know how he has simplified their findings. I also watch how people
completely misinterpret his writings. They think Blink shows that one should
always follows one's "gut feelings." False. Follow those instincts if and
only if you are an expert. If you have put in your thousands of hours of
study, thought so you have mastered hundreds of thousands of patterns that
might then subconscious find a match, then sure, go with those immediate
feelings. If you are a novice without that deep knowledge, you are a hazard
if you follow your gut. (Gladwell says all this, but many people miss it.)
Here is an example of how complex ideas can get oversimplified when written
about in the popular press. Let me compare two authors writing about the
very same concept. One author is me writing as Prof. Donald A. Norman, a
cognitive scientist writing on emotions in the scientific paper (call it
ONR after the initials of the three authors): Ortony, A., Norman, D. A., &
Revelle, W. (2005). The role of affect and proto-affect in effective
functioning. In J.-M. Fellous & M. A. Arbib (Eds.), Who Needs Emotions? (pp.
173-202). New York: Oxford University Press.
The other author is me writing as Don Norman, a trade book writer on
psychology, technology and society, and design, and in particular, author of
a book on emotion and design:
Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday
Things. New York: Basic Books.
Both the ONR paper and the Emotional Design book are based on the identical
work. The ONR paper is deep and exhaustive. It worries about details. It
qualifies every statement. It cites a zillion scientific studies. The book
is much more shallow. It skips over issues and problems. It over-simplifies.
(And it admits it: all applied work, I argue, has to be a simplification,
whether it is in mechanics, electronics, or design.)
The book was started after the ONR paper but published before the paper was
finished, even though the book was derived from the paper. Why did the
paper take so much longer? Because the three authors wanted to ensure that
everything was accurate. Why was the book so fast? It only took 3 years.
Because the author was writing a practical work, to help practicing
designers, so it didn't have to be perfectly accurate in scientific terms.
"Close enough" is "good enough."
I stand behind both works. But when it comes to the definition of
scientific phenomena, I want to read the scientists, not the popular or the
secondary sources. I also want to read what contemporary scientists say, not
what someone said 50 years ago. In science, knowledge changes. Science has
additive, cumulative knowledge. Alas, design does not seem to. And that
gives rise to another piece I am working on: Toward a science of design.
Science means that we have repeatable procedures. That others can build upon
previous work. That knowledge is cumulative. That we have generalizations so
that what is learned in one situation can be profitably applied in others.
That have verification procedures, so the claims made by some can be tested
by others, either to be refuted or to be enhanced. Design as a profession
lacks most of this. That's why it is still a profession. An art. A skill.
Design is a complex topic with many facets. Some parts will always remain an
art. Other parts can be made more systematic, even as engineering design has
become more systematic. We have to figure out how to capture the systematic
part and then how to make it work harmoniously with the art part, the part
that cannot be readily generalized.
But I must get back to service design. See you around
Don
Don Norman
Nielsen Norman group
Northwestern University
KAIST, Daejeon, Korea
[log in to unmask]
www.jnd.org/
|
