Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles News & Views Book Review

Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles, by Donald A. Norman. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company 1992. ISBN 0-201-62236-X, $14.00 (paperback) by Al Brown Senior editor at Okidata Originally published in News & Views November 1998 issue. Copyright © 1998 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

I don't know anyone in this line of work who never complains about the design of the products he or she documents. Life would be so much easier if the engineers didn't dream up products that are more complex than they need to be, controls that are counterintuitive, user interfaces that border on the opaque.... Sound familiar? We have an articulate and engaging spokesman in Donald A. Norman, who argued in his book The Design of Everyday Things (1988) that an understanding of how people interact with the world is the key to good, usable product design. His subsequent books have further examined the application of cognitive psychology to improving design. Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles is a collection of essays about design, technology, and human beings. A number of Norman's insights come as no surprise to anyone who reads STC publications or attends local or national meetings. The only difference is in the vocabulary and the context. "The proper way to design anything," he says, "is to start off understanding the tasks that are to be done and the needs of the users. In a kitchen, don't start with the appliances and counters, start with the people and their needs." This is user requirement analysis in homespun. After describing how a brilliant idea for a book title went awry, he comments, "A good rule of thumb in design is that if the designer really likes some special feature, it should probably be the first thing to be discarded." Every technical communicator has fallen victim to that dictum, and every editor has had to enforce it at one time or other. A personal favorite is Hofstadter's Law, which states: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." In my humble opinion, its recursive eloquence leaves Murphy in the dust. "Design Follies" and "The Home Magazine Kitchen" build on themes from The Design of Everyday Things: what happens when utility takes a back seat to aesthetics, and the consequences of what he calls "design neglect"-the failure to "spend time, effort, and thought at the task." Another example carried over from his previous book comes from aviation. In "Coffee Cups in the Cockpit," he questions the high percentage of fatal airplane accidents attributed to human error; design that doesn't take cognitive psychology into account allows automation to handle normal situations, but does not provide adequate feedback to allow the human pilot to cope with unusual circumstances. The problems of human-machine interaction are also central to the title essay. Norman uses the communication between mind and body and the conventions of social communication between individuals as metaphors for examining the control feedback between humans and machines. In that sense, turn signals are indeed the facial expressions of automobiles, since their sole function is to convey information to another driver. In most cases, a machine's communication of its condition and requirements would be considered arrogant and insensitive in a person; a telephone doesn't worry about intruding when it rings, for example. The conventions of human interaction have evolved over long periods of time; Norman sees a similar evolution in machine design (another recurring theme) "toward the graceful interaction of people and machines." In the six years since this book was written, user interface design has made enormous strides toward the type of grace Norman advocates. This does not, however reduce the value of the book. By pointing to the parallels between the evolution of human beings and the advances in the design of machines, he enables us to look at their interaction in a fresh way.

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Posted: November 10, 1998 (dls)