The first reading, “Attractive things work better” has changed one of the most important beliefs for me in the importance of beauty, as well as emphasized the importance of design for me. I don’t think I was fully convinced by previous readings that beauty was as important as utility. However, it is through this reading that I had the thought that beauty could improve mood, and therefore, help people to be more relaxed and be in positive affect, which could be the type of affect needed at the time as it increases “the tolerance for minor difficulties and blockages.” I also felt an emphasis on the importance of design, through a very possible example whereby a person in anxiety, in flight mode, running away from danger as urgently as possible, could respond to a door that wouldn’t open after pushing. People could react by kicking harder and pushing harder, but this doesn’t solve the problem. However, if people were more relaxed, they may have slightly different though to pull the door instead. This example shows how design could be important to help save lives. Thus, a key takeaway for me is that the principles of human-centered design are especially important in stressful situations. The implication is that designs intended for stressful situations must pay attention to matching the needs of the users, to make actions salient and easy to apply.
What stood out to me from second reading, “Her Code Got Humans to the Moon” are: first, the valuableness of code in allowing humans to go to the moon, or save lives, and much more; second, significance of not ignoring a danger as a possibility; third, the importance of an error detection and handling process. In particular, it was striking that when the Apollo software realized it didn’t have enough room to do all that it was doing, it went through its error detection process and simply focused on the highest priority. This was something I wanted to apply to my work as well.