The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution [Hardcover]

Donald A. Norman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 1998

Technologies have a life cycle, says Donald Norman, and companies and their products must change as they pass from youth to maturity. Alas, the computer industry thinks it is still in its rebellious teenage years, exulting in technical complexity. Customers want change. They are ready for products that offer convenience, ease of use, and pleasure. The technology should be invisible, hidden from sight.In this book, Norman shows why the computer is so difficult to use and why this complexity is fundamental to its nature. The only answer, says Norman, is to start over again, to develop information appliances that fit people's needs and lives. To do this companies must change the way they develop products. They need to start with an understanding of people: user needs first, technology last--the opposite of how things are done now. Companies need a human-centered development process, even if it means reorganizing the entire company. This book shows how.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Currently, computer users must navigate a sea of guidebooks, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and wizards to perform a task such as searching the Web or creating a spreadsheet. While Donald Norman acknowledges that the personal computer allows for "flexibility and power," he also makes its limitations perfectly clear. "The personal computer is perhaps the most frustrating technology ever," he writes. "It should be quiet, invisible, unobtrusive." His vision is that of the "information appliance," digital tools created to answer our specific needs, yet interconnected to allow communication between devices.

His solution? "Design the tool to fit so well that the tool becomes a part of the task." He proposes using the PC as the infrastructure for devices hidden in walls, in car dashboards, and held in the palm of the hand. A word of caution: some of Norman's zealotry leads to a certain creepiness (global positioning body implants) and goofiness (electric-power-generating plants in shoes). His message, though, is reasonably situated in the concept that the tools should bend to fit us and our goals: we sit down to write, not to word process; to balance bank accounts, not to fill in cells on a spreadsheet. In evenly measuring out the future of humanity's technological needs--and the limitations of the PC's current incarnation--Norman presents a formidable argument for a renaissance of the information appliance. --Jennifer Buckendorff

From Publishers Weekly

The personal computer industry is still in its "rebellious adolescent stage," says Norman, who asserts that it is time for it to "grow up" and "enter the... world of consumer appliances"Aconvenient, versatile, pleasurable tools with potential to communicate with each other in a global information matrix. Norman (The Design of Everyday Things; Things That Make Us Smart), an established voice in the field, explains why and offers prescriptions for how such changes are to come about, together with specific ideas about what kinds of information devices might emerge. He synthesizes wisdom from the history of technology, industrial social sciences, product design and marketing to support his vision of information appliances. The key reform he advocates is human-centered product design emphasizing user experience in addition to technology and marketing considerations. Norman's provocative analysis is laced with analogies and anecdotes, and is augmented by 128 illustrations. Though all the subtitle's claims are addressed in distinct chapters, some portions seem superfluous. Because "usability often lies in the details," the argument can occasionally get bogged down in minutiae or broad-stroke summaries of motion study and other historical innovations. Stylistic glitches aside, however, Norman offers an enlightening and pragmatic account of the interrelated currents and riptides affecting product development in the computer/information industry. Readers who digest this analysis will be well rewarded.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First edition. edition (September 21, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262140659
• ISBN-13: 978-0262140652
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,228,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Don Norman is a voyeur, always watching, always on the lookout for some common-day occurrence that everyone else takes for granted but that when examined, yields insight into the human condition. (If you are rushing to catch a train, how do you know if you got to the station on time? Empty platform? You probably are too late. People milling about, looking at their watches,peering down the tracks? Probably OK. Who needs technology when people are so informative, even if as an accidental byproduct of their activities.

Business Week has named him one of "the world's most influential designers," the influence from his books, essasys, courses and students, lectures, and consulting.

He takes special delight in the interaction of people and technology. "Turn signals are the facial expressions of automobiles" is the title of his book of essays, which illustrates his philosophy. (Not one of his most popular books, alas. Too quirky even for fans.)

He keeps complaining that he is too busy, as he adds on even more activities. He likes to say that he spends half his time as co-director of Northwestern University's MMM program, the dual degree MBA + Engineering program that emphasizes design and operations, half with the Nielsen Norman group, half writing, and the remaining half serving on advisory boards, such as the editorial advisory board of Encyclopedia Britannica and the Industrial Design Department of Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where he is Distinguished Visiting Professor.

He is a fellow of many organizations and former lots of things, including VP at Apple Computer and even President of a startup. He has honorary degrees from the University of Padova (Italy) and the Technical University Delft (the Netherlands). He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. He is known for his books "The Design of Everyday Things," "Emotional Design," and "The Design of Future Things," but he is most proud of his students,, now all over the world, who put into practice his human-centered design philosophy. He is now finishing the book "Sociable Design: How to Manage Complexity," to be published by MIT Press in Fall 2010. He lives at www.jnd.org, where you can find chapters from his books and loads of essays.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A verbose articulation of ideas described better by others, January 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution (Hardcover)

His basic argument in this book is that the computer industry has matured to the point where it can no longer just cater to the early-adopter technologists and must appeal to the masses to continue growth. Unfortunately, the industry doesn't know how to do this and continues to deliver technology for technology's sake, leading to fat computers and technology that aren't that useful or appealing to most people, and are beginning to exhaust the technologists too. He introduces some recent, but standard models of technology adoption for discussing the problems, customer-centered design in cross-disciplinary teams (marketing, engineering, and user experience) for designing products that transcend the problems (explicitly discussing Contextual Design a few times), and "information appliances," multitudes of small, task-focused technology products that will replace our big, cumbersome, general-purpose (but not great at any) PCs.

Norman's forte is definitely cognitive and experimental psychology in product design, and not being a technological or product development process visionary. I found very little new or interesting content in the book, and I don't think he articulated even some of the derived ideas very well. The whole book could have been condensed into a long magazine article. His prose is wordy and redundant, and the book is regrettfully lacking in many of the detailed case studies and examples he's used in previous books to elucidate his ideas. I want the idiosyncratic and outspoken psychologist professor back, such as he was in The Design of Everyday Things, or the powerful academic argument of Things That Make Us Smart. His short stint as a VP of HPs "Information Appliances" division, and his earlier work at Apple, was not enough to give him a deep understanding or insight into the problems of the current technology-product market.

He does make some good book recommendations, however, and I'll add my favorite articulation of the problem, that I think articulate the problem and potential solutions much better:

C. M. Christensen, _The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail_, 1997. G. A. Moore, _Crossing The Chasm: Marketingand Selling High-Tech Goods to Mainstream Customers_, 1991. T. K. Landauer, _The Trouble With Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity_, 1995.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not his best work, April 1, 2002

By 

B. Scott Andersen (Acton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution (Paperback)

I'm a fan of Donald Norman's work so when I finally had a
chance to pick up "The Invisible Computer" I had high hopes.
Unfortunately, this work didn't provide the same insight and
focus as his previous books such as "The Design of Everyday
Things".

Throughout the work Norman draws upon "Crossing the Chasm"
and "Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon
Valley's Cutting Edge" [both by Geoffrey Moore]. Also
heavily emphasized are the ideas put forth by "The

Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms
to Fail." All of these books are interesting--but I wanted
something from Norman himself.

Chapter 7, "Being Analog", was more in line with what I had
come to expect from Norman. He ends this chapter with this:
"Alas, most of today's machines, especially the computer,
force people to use them on their own terms, terms that are
antithetical to the way people work and think. The result is
frustration, an increase in the rate of error (usually
blamed on the user--human error--instead of on faulty
design), and a general turning away from technology. Will
the interaction between people and machines be done
correctly in the future? Might schools of computer science
start teaching the human-centered approach that is necessary
to reverse the trend? I don't see why not." That's what I'm
looking for! If only the rest of the book had followed that
passion.

Instead focusing on human factors and man-machine

interface issues, Norman wanders discussing substitutable
goods vs. nonsubstitutable goods, a rehash of why software
is hard to write (and the mythical man month), and even some
embarrassing admissions now that he'd spent some time outside
academia and worked a bit in industry: "Time, or rather the
lack of it, I was starting to learn, is one of the greatest
barriers to quality". As my young nieces would say to me,
"duh!"

Finally, although written in the late 1990's with the

paperback edition published in 1998, I found the text to
already be a bit dated. You don't realize how quickly the
computer industry moves until you find a book frozen in time
like this one.

My recommendation is to read Norman's other works and the
works he recommends here (Crossing the Chasm, Inside the
Tornado, and Innovator's Dilemma). Finally, I recommend
"Machine Beauty" by David Gelernter. It provides more
passion and keener insights than this work--and is generally
more fun to read!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rambling but inspirational, January 21, 2000

By 

David Lenef "Blue Dave" (La Grange Park, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution (Paperback)

The book is a rallying cry for the technology industry, a call to arms for the geek troops. Sure, the writing is like a beta version that the publisher decided to go live with, but the essential concepts and emotion come through loud and clear.

Norman builds a solid foundation for his arguments, citing historical cases and several written works. The book was a fun, easy read. When I finished Invisible Computer, I felt the same sort of illumination and clarity that came after reading Alan Cooper's About Face.

His vision of ubiquitous information appliances and devices will undoubtedly come true in ways none of us can imagine. But what will become of the PC? Will I have 100 individual devices replacing the 100 software programs I have installed? Hardly. But the book doesn't really address the ongoing need for a general purpose computer.

In the end, I would recommend this book to anyone involved in technology. It definitely altered my personal perception of where tech products have come from and where they are headed. Time will tell if his ideas are strong enough to truly help shape the future of software and product development.