Gadget Guru : Professor Wants Machines to Serve, Not Control

UC San Diego Prof. Donald Norman believes technology has gotten out of hand.

In homes across America, improperly programmed VCRs relentlessly flash “12:00,” and microwaves spit out lukewarm casseroles. In offices, people inadvertently disconnect calls they meant to put on hold and destroy computer information they meant to save. Norman, director of UC San Diego’s Institute for Cognitive Science, fumes over stuff like this.

“Today, it is as if people function to serve machines,” said Norman, 55.

To figure out how to turn that equation around, Norman spends his days studying household appliances, control panels on jets and hotel showers. Funded in part by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he examines airplane cockpits to analyze how the design might contribute to accidents. Hired by several computer companies, including Apple, Norman investigates whether the keyboards and software are truly serving the people using them.

“The goal is not to eliminate technology, it is to modify it, the better to serve human needs,” said Norman, a guru of gadgets and author of “The Psychology of Everyday Things.”

Norman’s research is among a growing number of studies in the United States and abroad that addresses a long-ignored question: Why don’t technology and people mix?

The answer: Bad design, he says. In cases of an error involving a device or equipment, don’t be so quick to blame yourself, Norman cautioned. It could well be the result of a poorly placed switch or an undersized button.

Someone once handed Norman a new digital watch, warning him that in order to set the time “you would need an engineering degree from MIT.” Norman, who has an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who once taught at Harvard University, said the watch took him several hours to figure out.

“Why should it take hours?” he asked in his book.

In his office at his two-story home on the Del Mar coast, north of San Diego, bearded and bespectacled Norman settles into a well-worn secretary’s chair, forgoing a high-tech, backless balance chair. A slim man, wearing faded jeans and a sport shirt, he is quick to jump up and select a gadget, photograph, book or article to illustrate his theories.

His schedule, he will tell you, is packed. Grumbling about how Japanese manufacturers make buttons too small, he fumbles with his electronic calendar to call up September. During the next two hours--as though to prove his point--a delivery of new software arrives; his wife, Julie, drops off one of his edited draft chapters, his dog bounds in, and a graduate student visits.

Norman estimates that each day, Americans encounter about 20,000 objects, from pencils to light bulbs to clocks. Then there are those little stove knobs. Why, Norman wants to know, does each manufacturer develop a different way of lining up the dials that control the burners?

Some poorly designed items merely stymie their owners. Others, he says, can endanger their lives.

According to a draft of Norman’s upcoming book, “Things That Make Us Smart,” up to 75% of airline accidents are attributed to pilot error. Norman maintains that poor design of the cockpit is responsible for some of those accidents.

“To me, the problem is neither human nor pilot error: It is . . . the design of the technology that requires people to behave in inappropriate ways,” Norman writes. “It is possible to design things that make appropriate use of both people and technology.”

The field of cognitive science, or the study of how the mind works, is relatively new--taking hold in the last decade, experts said. The UC San Diego department, which Norman helped found in 1988, has 15 full-time faculty, 200 undergraduate majors, and 30 graduate students. It is the only cognitive science department in the UC system and one of few in the country.

“Norman was one of the major players who got this field of cognitive science going,” said Charles E. Wright, a Columbia University associate professor of psychology who has used Norman’s book in the classroom.

“Norman has a real original approach to thinking about psychology,” said Barbara Tversky, a Stanford University psychology professor who specializes in cognitive science. “He also brings an engineering perspective to psychology--examining what it takes to get things done, and that’s a point of view we don’t always have in psychology.”

Norman seems to relish the work that allows him to examine everything from computer arcade games to Boeing 747 airplane simulators, or “advanced toys,” as he calls them. He gleefully confides that once, in order to justify enrolling in a scuba-diving class, he came up with a study of underwater hearing. Now, he is hammering out plans for a brief sojourn in Kenya to study baboons--an expedition that his wife and 11-year-old son will join.

Best yet, he can purchase almost any gadget he fancies--all in the name of science.

“I am this crazy professor and by being a professor I can get away with anything,” Norman said. “In a foreign country, it’s even better, I’m this crazy American professor.”

For the next six months, Norman has vowed to spend 16 hours a day writing two books, “Things That Make Us Smart” and “Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles,” a collection of essays about how technology functions in society, which is scheduled to be released next year. With his books, consulting and salary as a professor, Norman earns about $200,000 a year.

Norman admits he is not winning the war to improve the widgets of the world. In his living room, the switch plate to turn on all the lights still does not work right. For the second time, he is redesigning it so that the toggle for each light is keyed to a sort of floor plan on the switch.

His Bauhaus-style house is littered with technological flotsam, like the walkie-talkies that he purchased to be able to talk with his wife as they rode bikes. But the devices, uncomfortable to wear, blocked conversation by creating whining noises.

“The complexity of design goes up with the cube of the number of features,” Norman said.

Huh?

“If you double the number of features, you get a device that’s eight times more complicated,” he explained.

In the vernacular of cognitive science, most people cope with their increasingly technical world by customizing, or modifying a system to better suit their needs. In Norman’s case, that means putting colored dots on the dashboards of the family’s two cars to indicate which side the gas tank is located. He also puts yellow and red dots on his answering machine to distinguish the mute button from the rewind button.

“It’s not possible to design something that fits everybody. So why not make it easier for customers to customize?” Norman asked.

In the years ahead, Norman figures he has his work cut out for him. Curling his lip in disgust, he said: “Consumer goods are a disaster.”