"Many devices operate silently, efficiently, and aside from the occasional clicking of a hard drive or the noise of a fan, they do not reveal much of their internal operations" (p. 135).
"We are left to the mercy of the designers for any information about device's internal workings, what is happening within the device" (pp. 135-136).
"Communication, explanation, and understanding: these are the keys to working with intelligent agents" (p. 136).
The above quotes all go together between pages 135 and 136 in Norman and I feel they are key to understanding communication with machines. The ability of people to sense the smooth operation of machines used to rest in part (and in many cases still does) on the ability to hear what was happening. I think of a time when my uncle, a farmer, got his hand caught in a combine. His son was driving the combine and noticed a change in the sound - immediately he turned it off, and in doing so, saved most of my uncle's hand (a good portion of two fingers were lost, but a small sacrifice when compared to what could have been). Without this feedback, there would have been a far different outcome. Where else do these sounds alert us to danger? Cars, most definitely, yet as Norman notes, manufacturers are quieting sounds and making it so drivers hardly hear a thing. It seems strange to me that artificial sounds would need to be reintroduced to indicate when machines are having problems - I suppose the difference is that one would only hear these sounds when there was actually a problem, as opposed to the continuous sound of 'business as usual' - as in the sounds of the road. I can relate to the example that Norman gave with automatic steering - one of the first cars I learned to drive on was a big boat of a Chevrolet with automatic steering. Having graduated from the manual steering of an ancient Valiant, the lack of road feeling with the Chev made it feel as if I had no control and was simply floating down the road -- it took me some time to adjust to the different feel and 'separation' from the road. I think the car lacked the "road feel" that Norman says has been re-introduced in modern vehicles by carefully controlling how much effort is required and reintroducing some of the road vibrations (I guess the car wasn't modern - must have been in the 'olden days' then!).
With a quick search on 'car steering' I came up with the video below. It is a good example of communicating with our machines ... perhaps rife with problems that may not be too difficult to predict (what about the driver who likes to take in the scenery??), yet still an interesting example of where research is heading.
As Norman writes, "Machines, though, are artificially created by people who often assume perfect performance on its part and, moreover, fail to understand the critical importance of a continuing dialogue between cooperating entities" (p. 136). Even if the machine is working perfectly, people still need to know what is happening - the key? Provide continual awareness without annoyance ... no doubt easier said than done! "Any design unable to give meaningful feedback is doomed to failure in the
marketplace" (p. 146) - definitely something to consider as we develop our products in class.
And just because it's fun to see how communicating 'with our machines' sometimes also means understanding of a broader social context and dialogue ...
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