Norman,“Emotion & Design: Attractive things work better”
The main takeaways!
- “Design matters, but which design…depends on the occasion, the context, and above all the mood.”
- “Pleasing things work better, are easier to use, and produce a more harmonious result.”
- “The design should not become a barrier, it should be carefully tailored for a task.”
- “A product must be beautiful, have useful function, work well, and be usable and understandable.”
With these quotes, I took away the importance of balance in regards to great design. It is essential to make sure you are covering all aspects of the design process:
- Ensuring your product is providing some sort of benefit or fulfilling a certain purpose
- Catches the user’s eyes with its attractive design, whether it be adding a combination of colors or cool features that ultimately enhance the likability of the product.
- Making sure that there is a certain level of learnability. This is where the human centered design really comes through. A product should be pretty self explanatory to ensure that the user doesn’t become frustrated with the product, therefore halting the usage of it.
Her Code Got Humans On the Moon — And Invented Software Itself.
I really appreciate how this article highlighted the female computer scientist Margaret Hamilton and her role in the Apollo Mission, as well as how her creations deeply impacted the future of computer science. It is refreshing to hear more about female contributions to the field of computer science since the field is so male dominated.
The section of the article about Hamilton being under great pressure to be perfect while building the computer software for the mission was very relatable. I can understand her worries about not being perfect, because she was not only representing herself, but women (at the time) in computer science. The article writes, “I [Hamilton] was always imagining headlines in the newspapers and they would point back to how it happened, and it would point back to me.”. When she says this, she demonstrates how much pressure was placed on her to be flawless. This is something I believe many women, particularly in technical fields, experience.