Norman,“Emotion & Design: Attractive things work better”
The reading provide us with a new perspective on aesthetics design: rather than solely serving a “beauty” function, it improves people’s attention span, positive emotions when interacting with the design, which might end up in improving the problem solving of the product/design. I highly agree with this perspective. For example, when computers were first invented, they dominated with command-line control interface which prevents the majority from using this advanced-system. However, later on, designers of Apple and Microsoft realized this problem and design separately two systems that are heavy with image interfaces. Today, all systems inherit that idea and people today interact heavily with these more well-designed systems.
Her Code Got Humans on the Moon
Other than impressed by the great works done by Margaret Hamilton and her strong spirit that overcomes all the adversaries, I am particular interested in anecdote of the reading where Hamilton proposed that there might be error in the program when preloading P01, her leaders refuse to add error-checking within the software. Though the astronauts are the most well-trained, they still trigger the error during the real mission. This story reminds me the importance of error-preventing programs. Even though something might seem stupid when people first develop them, people might really end up in this “stupid” situation. Luckily, during this mission, the problem is resolved. However, there are numerous examples in history related to how a minor computer error lead to billions of losses.