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Donald A. Norman. The Invisible Computer Why Good Products Can Fail, The Personal Computer is So Complex, and Information Appliances are the Solution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998, 302 pages, $25.00.
Reviewed by Richard Blackburn, Associate Professor, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Recently, the computer center at my institution had to reboot a server. Their actions immobilized my personal computer until a staff member paid two visits to my office to remedy the problem at my end of the network. I was clueless as to what had happened and what, if anything, I could have done to restore my machine without outside assistance. Now, I sit at that same PC writing this review, and I find myself staring at the many icons that surround the typing window. I open the drop-down menus and marvel at the number of options available, wondering when (or if) I will ever use more than a few of them. At the bottom of the screen are four task bars representing the four other applications open right now, each application surrounding the screen with its own set of icons.
Both of these situations reflect issues that Donald Norman considers in his book, The Invisible Computer. Norman's general premise is that information technology in general and PCs in particular have grown too complex for the average user to understand. One explanation for this is the "incestuous" relationships that exist between the hardware and software providers. More powerful software demands more powerful hardware, enabling more powerful software, requiring more powerful hardware, ad infinitum. This vicious cycle, he argues, is a direct result of the technology-driven mentality in the new product design and development processes found at most hardware and software producers.
To provide an alternative model to this approach, Norman aims his volume at product managers in technology companies, at the functional experts who people the product development teams in these companies, but also at users of the resulting products. He provides a brief survey of how the computer industry has reached this point, and he offers two...