Donald A. Norman
This chapter covers awareness. When riding a horse, the rider is constantly aware of the horse. He can interpret the horses mood, energy level, etc. by just being there. This is inherently different than machines. In most cases when machines try to make us aware, it is just annoying. At the same time, it is usually necessary. Imagine trying to connect your computer to the internet without any kind of feedback. The only way you will know your computer is connected when you are able to access the internet. If you are able to access the internet, its fine. If you are not, however, it is really annoying. The trick is to create awareness for machines while not making them annoying.
Computers are some of the most susceptible to being annoying and aware at the same time. It is not so much the computers fault as it is the ability of the user. For extremely vanilla users, having all the checks and tutorials is a good thing. However, for a senior computer science major, they tend to just be in the way. It would be nice for a computer to be told the capabilities of the user. Then the computer could change its user settings based on the capabilities of the user. This is almost a way to bypass awareness in the way that it varies its control based on the users ability and understanding of the computer itself.
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