Design of Future Things

Chapter 3
Summary

Bicycles in Holland illustrate natural safety

Donald A. Norman talks about the importance of the natural communication that occurs between things and the users. In this chapter, he proposes the use of pleasing sounds in order to enable objects to communicate in a more natural way with the environment. However, the author also recognizes that sound can contaminate the environment. For example, objects might produce sounds that are unnatural and annoying to the users, thus creating a conflict between too much sounds or not enough of them.
Norman also describes another way of communicating: Affordances. This concept allows the machine to communicate with users in a more intuitive, more simple way than other concepts. The author expresses this fact by providing the example of tight-reign and loose-reign in horse back riding. Norman describes a necessity for users and machines to have a way to communicate goals and plans in order to achieve a certain activity. Lastly, the concepts of natural safety and responsive automation are discusses.

Discussion
I thought the chapter was a little long, yet interesting. What I really notices about the author's work is that his concept of designing new things relies a lot on the way we currently perform activities. I also think he prefer the natural ways in which nature perform activities. It would be interesting to see new inventions that take advantage of these paradigms and whether or not they would in fact be more beneficial to the users and more natural-feeling.