Dear Don,
Thank you for your message and the links.
I agree. There is a substantial body of relevant material and data
available in cog psych, social psych, ergonomics and the like about these
issues.
It was a slightly different issue I was pointing to: the problem of analysis
based on false assumptions that human-made concepts that have been deeply
adopted are 'real' internal processes. This error presents particular
problems in theorising about self-reflective decision making in mind about
directing attention in developing partial design solutions and the like - a
central issue in understanding how we design things.
There are multiple examples of concepts that present this problem. Perhaps
the most difficult, because we are so conditioned, is the problem of
emotions sensed as 'feelings'. These feelings and emotions are only concepts
- not real. The underlying body behaviours are real. In contrast, emotions
as feelings (happiness, sadness, contentment etc) are merely conditioned
conceptualised interpretations of body responses that in essence do not
themselves exist . Different conditioning/culture can result in different
interpretations of the same body responses. Same issue for anything in which
the internal process isn't directly available for inspection, only its
consequneces, and the perception of the consequences of its actions is
conceptualised to the point that we come to believe the concept is the
internal process. The classic example is the false belief that objects and
light are coloured. I realise some in cognitive psychology have addressed
many of these issues, yet they return with the difficulty of bridging back
into everyday discussions and theorising
On a lighter note, coming to the same problem from a very different
direction, have you come across Bentall's critique of behaviours associated
with the concept of happiness and his suggestion that happiness is best
classified as a psychiatric disorder ?-
http://jme.bmj.com/content/18/2/94.full.pdf+html
Best wishes,
Terry
--
Dr Terence Love
PhD (UWA), B.A. (Hons) Engin, PGCE. FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don Norman
Sent: Tuesday, 4 February 2014 12:11 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: Re: Engineering and Culture -conflicts?
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 4:28 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is latter is problematic because the typical way of modelling
> human users is unhelpfully reflective, i.e. we problematically think
> human users are as we see ourselves.
>
Of course this is only true of lay people (which includes many designers and
most engineers). There is considerable work on modeling people within the
psychological and cognitive sciences, some of which is indeed used in design
(especially for complex equipment and aircraft), and this is based entirely
upon hard, rigorous data.
see:
Cognitive simulation as a tool for cognitive task analysis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1516575
And even animation -- watch the movie
http://cg.cis.upenn.edu/
Don
Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and
Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>"
(DOET2).
Course: Udacity On-Line course based on
DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101>
(free).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD
studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|