Below are some (a lot of) notes that I made from reading Chapter 2 of Donald A Norman’s book.

GULF OF EXECUTION & EVALUATION

Gulf of Execution – people figure out how technology operates (physical indicators, e.g. a handle to signify pulling)

Gulf of Evaluation – people figure out what happened. It is a reflection of the amount of effort an individual has to make to gather the physical state of the device, and also to see if their expectations align with their initial intentions – ‘what happened?’ ‘Is this what I wanted the end result to be?’

The role of the designer is to bridge the Gulfs.

THE SEVEN STAGES OF ACTION

1. Goal – form the goal, what would we like to achieve.
2. Plan – the action, how can we achieve the goal.
3. Specify – what actions will I perform in order to reach the goal.
4. Perform
5. Perceive – what is the state of the world, and how did this effect my performance 
6. Interpet – making sense of what happened 
7. Compare – is what happened, what I wanted?

One for goals, three for action and three for evaluation. The Seven Stages of Action is helpful when designing interaction. The action cycle does not need to go from top to bottom always, as sometimes an event in the World may be the trigger (data-driven or event-driven behaviour).

HUMAN THOUGHTS & COGNITION

• Root cause analysis – where the question ‘why?’ Is asked until the ultimate, fundamental cause of the task is reached
• Declarative memory – memory of factual information
• Procedural memory – recalling the activities performed in order to remember 
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Visceral – the most basic level of processing.  It helps to make quick judgements about ones environment (good or bad, and safe or dangerous). Using the Visceral system we are able to respond subconsciously and quickly, without awareness or control. It is linked to the body’s motor system and whether we fight or flight in a situation.

For a designer, style (appearances, e.g. sound and light) matters as this is what drives the visceral response. Designers use aesthetic sensibilities to drive the visceral response, as it has nothing to do with how usable or effective a product is.

Behavioural – home of learned skills that are triggered by certain situations, e.g. when playing a sport our responses occur too quickly for conscious control, so this is where the behavioural level takes over.

As a designer, the most crucial element to the behavioural level is that every action is associated with an expectation, e.g. expecting a positive outcome will result in a positive affective response (positive valence). The information provided in the feedback loop of evaluation judges the expectations, and decides whether there are feelings of satisfaction, relief, disappointment or even frustration.

Reflective – home of conscious cognition. Deep understanding is developed in this level, and it is also where reasoning and conscious decision making take place. Reflection is cognitive, deep and slow (unlike the other two levels) and is often a result of after an event has happened. Emotion and cognition are highly intertwined.

All three levels work together and all play essential roles in determining a persons opinion on a product or service (along with their cognitive and emotional state). High-level reflective cognition can trigger lower-level emotions and vice versa.

“Flow” – labeled by Mihay Csikzentmihalyi as the complete emotional emersion into an activity, where individuals will lose track of time and the outside environment. The task is difficult enough to provide a challenge and also the need for constant attention, but not so difficult that is causes a response of stress and anxiety. ‘Flow’ requires the activity to neither be to difficult or easy, relative to our skill level. The feeling of constant tension which is coupled with continuous progress and success creates an engaging and immersive experience.

CONCEPTUAL MODELS

Conceptual models are a type of story which are a result of our predisposition to find explanations and our natural propensity to attribute causes to events. Such models are important in helping us understand our own experiences, predict the outcome of our actions and having the ability to handle unexpected occurrences. Conceptual models are built from any knowledge we have on a topic, which may even be built from a poor understanding. With the absence of external information, we can make poor choices.

Learned helplessness – the situation where people experience repeated failure at a task, and therefore they decide that the task cannot be completed (at least by themselves). In extreme cases (where learned helplessness is experienced in many attributes of life) it can lead to depression where individuals feel they cannot cope with everyday life at all

Positive Psychology – a culture of positive thinking and feeling good about oneself. When something doesn’t work it can be considered as an interesting challenge, or a positive learning experience. 

“Failures are an essential part of exploration and creativity. If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough — they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things”.

DESIGN ISSUES

Blaming yourself when there is a design issue is a huge problem, and has lead to products not being ‘fixed’ as people believe their errors are an act of ‘stupidity’ rather than a design error. An intrinsic part of our nature is that humans error continually, and system design should really take this fact into account. Machines are not people and also cannot communicate the way that people do, and therefore as a designer we have a special obligation to ensure that a machine’s behaviour is understandable to the individuals who use them.

“Designers should strive to minimize the chance of inappropriate actions in the first place by using affordances, signifiers, good mapping, and constraints to guide the actions. If a person performs an inappropriate action, the design should maximize the chance that this can be discovered and then rectified. This requires good, intelligible feedback coupled with a simple, clear conceptual model”

THE SEVEN STAGES OF ACTION: SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES

1. What do I want to accomplish?
2. Are there any alternative action sequences?
3. Is there a specific action I can do now?
4. How do I perform that action?
5. What happened?
6. What does this mean?
7. Have I accomplished my goal? And is this okay?

Any individual using a product should be able to determine the answers to all seven questions, it is important that a product provides the information required to answer each question.

Feedforward – info that helps answer questions of execution. It is accomplished through appropriate use of signifiers, constraints and mappings and the conceptual model plays a large role.

Feedback – info that aids in the understanding of what has happened. It is accomplished through explicit information about the impact of the action and once again, the conceptual model plays an important role.