Living With Complexity

Living With Complexity

Don A. Norman

Source

Summary:

Chapter 1: In the first chapter of this book, Norman differentiates between complexity and complicated. Something that is complex is described as a state of mind, however something that is understandable, just maybe difficult to master. Something that is complicated is something that is confusing, difficult to understand. Norman claims that complex things can be enjoyable and desirable. When things are too simple, they may appear as boring. 

Chapter 2: Norman discusses the idea that simplicity is in the mind of each individual. Depending on the scenario and the situation the individual is, that is the level of complexity that he will give to a certain task. Norman again discusses Conceptual Models, and how they are created either simple or complex depending on the individual. Norman also demonstrates that not even the things we believe the most simple, are in fact simple. Each artifact should have an appropriate level of complexity. Norman also reaches to the conclusion that individuals prefer an intermediate level of complexity. As previously states, individuals may find simple stuff to be boring and unworthy.

Chapter 3: Norman discusses how things that are supposed to be simple and non trivial can in fact complicate our lives. He gives the examples of door locks and passwords to demonstrate this idea. If we had only one door knob or only one password, then that would be an easy task to remember, however, technology allows for more than one door knob and requires more than one password. This idea then leads us to put information in the world, making it easier to be accessed by undesired people. Norman claims the solution to these problems is in the quality of a design.

Chapter 4: Social signifiers are those indicators that are either deliberately or incidentally placed that provide information to an individual. Signifiers are similar to affordances, in fact they are the perceived affordances. Norman discusses how culture affects these signifiers and how effective they really are.

Discussion: One of the main topics so far in the book is the idea that we should be able to differentiate between something that is complex from something that is confusing. The fact that certain device looks simple, does not necessarily mean it is better, in fact in many of the cases means that the device is even more complicated than it really looks like. 

 

When reading about this, it reminded me about the example Norman gave in one of his previous readings, and how we may think that a phone with less buttons is simpler, however, the telephone does not provide enough information to create an appropriate mental model.

 

Something I did enjoy reading about in these chapters was about the irony technology is what some times introduces complexity, however technology is also able to automate or somehow deal with this high complexity.

 

Even though the ideas are interesting, these were previously introduced by the other Norman books, so it is not something new really. As in the previous readings, Norman examples are useful and applicable to life, which in my opinion makes the book more readable. 

Now that I look back after reading the first chapters of the book, I can now understand the meaning of its cover page. How something that should be really simple, such as salt and pepper containers, can actually complicate our lives if they are not well designed and maybe even standardized.