Amusing comment, Terry.
On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> For what it's worth, a time and motion study on academic researcher
> activities I did in 2001 seemed to indicate six revisions was optimal for
> successful research publications.... More than six revisions seemed to be
> a waste
> of time.
>
It is not possible to define a draft, at least for my writing, because i am
always writing, so when by body tells me it is time to write a book, I
start with hundreds or even thousands of pages of already written text that
is sorted, edited, discarded, and repurposed.
For a book revision, do you count the drafts for the original as well as
for the revision, given that many pages have only minimal changes? If so,
this is probably draft 20.
A technical paper is very different than a popular trade book. Technical
paper authors seldom make their text easy to read or even easy to
understand. And even for that small sample of people who do, they assume an
educated, sophisticated audience. For trade books, understanding is
critical, and the audience is assumed to have no prior knowledge of the
content matter.
The hard part about revising this book is to avoid revision. It has been
very successful, so the design challenge is to update the examples, update
advances in the basic theoretical concepts, but avoid the temptation to
include all the new thoughts I have had in the last 25 years. The Design of
Everyday Things is meant to be a quick read, a way of motivating readers
and giving a quick introduction to the fundamental principles of
interaction design, with a smattering of observational skills and
understanding of the larger picture of design and product development.
Causal readers will stop with this book. Serious design students or
practicitioners might use this as a starting point, but they will read a
lot more. And take courses.
But the last book lasted 25 years, so this revision might also. What
examples can i use that will still be valid in 2038? Light switches, yes
(although it is time for a major change in these archaic,
fixed wiring devices). Water faucets/taps? Yeah, they will still be
problematic. Doors? Yup.
Electronic stuff and even automobiles are all apt to be dramatically
different. We will still have cellphones (mobiles)? maybe not. Sure, we
will still talk on devices, but they might not be called phones. And they
are apt to look different. Today's smart phones are really platforms. And
people don't talk very much on them. They are for communication via short
messages. They are for entertainment. and they are for browsing and
searching and checking up on friends and local restaurants, bars, and
parties.
In the book I am including a photo of a 1912 phone compared with a 2012
mobile phone. They look like two completely different devices. What will
it look like in 2038? Consider the Edison cylinder phonograph versus an
iPod. I have a Punch magazine drawing of a video conference from 1878. The
video looks far better than anything we have today, but the voice seems to
use the old-fashioned phones that look like speaking tubes: one speaks into
a rather large trumpet-shaped device.
But this book is not about how things are used: it is about the fundamental
design principles for interaction, and they depend upon human psychology,
and that will be the same -- at least until we do real genetic manipulation
or have embedded processors and devices in our bodies (this is coming).
enough
don
|