Attractive Things Work Better” by Donald A. Norman
One key question this reading raises for me is about finding the right balance between usability and aesthetics in design. Norman argues that while usability is extremely important, especially for tools used in stressful situations, aesthetics and emotional appeal also play a vital role that designers should not ignore. But he cautions against veering too far into just making things “pretty” at the expense of functionality. This tension between utility and beauty is an age-old debate in design circles, and Norman seems to be staking out a middle ground position. I’m left wondering where exactly that line should be drawn and how designers can best integrate those two priorities harmoniously.
Norman’s discussion of how positive and negative affect can influence cognitive processing styles was thought-provoking to me. The idea that negative emotions like anxiety tend to induce a depth-first, focused cognitive style while positive emotions promote a breadth-first, creative processing mode was new to me. His examples, like being able to walk easily across a plank on the ground versus being fearful of doing so high up, illustrated this vividly. It made me reflect on the emotional states that different product designs might evoke in users and how that could impact their ability to understand and utilize the design effectively.
Her Code Got Humans on the Moon—And Invented Software Itself
It makes me wonder about all the other underrecognized women who made pioneering contributions to early computing and coding during an era when it was an extremely male-dominated field. How many other “founding mothers” were there whose stories have gone untold?
The narrative surrounding the Apollo computer’s hardware, especially how its memory was intricately hand-woven into copper wires by a team dubbed the “Little Old Ladies,” struck me. The physicality and manual labor involved in producing this early digital memory seem almost quaint compared to today’s silicon memory chips, and it is quite difficult to imagine how it would look. But it’s a powerful reminder of how software was so revolutionarily abstract during that era—lines of code inscribed into physical materials to control machinery. The leap of imagination required to conceptualize and construct software systems is fascinating.
I was reminded of the film Hidden Figures and the stories it told about the African American women “computers” at NASA who did crucial mathematical calculations for the space program. While their roles were more analog data processing rather than software programming, there are parallels in how these marginalized groups were instrumental to NASA’s achievements yet rendered nearly invisible by societal prejudices of the time. Both highlight how institutional blindspots caused pioneering technical work by minorities and women to be overlooked and undervalued for decades.