Book Reading #39 - Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 0: Introduction: Why Do We Make Mistakes? Because...
Summary:
This chapter introduces the idea that why and who we blame for mistakes may not be accurate. Most errors made can be attributed to humans. This suggests that the mistakes are due to the limitations of what we can do. There exists a bias that alters our perception when mistakes are made. The mistakes we make are shaped by simple factors and will be discussed further.

Discussion:
This subject was talked about in our Donald Norman readings. It will be interesting to read an entire book about it assuming it doesn't repeat itself over and over! I liked how the idea was introduced by describing the world around us and what it expects. An example is remembering things like PIN numbers and passwords and how studies showed that most people forgot them shortly.

Chapter 1: We Look but Don’t Always See
Summary:
This chapter talks about how we don't always see what we need to see. It talks about visual errors and how humans are prone to them. Movie mistakes and how nobody really notices them is given as an example. It also discusses some other limitations for the way we see things, such as looking for something familiar. The example used is a beer bottle. If we expect to see it in one place and it is not there? How do we search for it? Things such as shape, size, labels, color, and other things can be used to compare with other items. Searching for things may be longer and harder than one would think.

Discussion:
This chapter was interesting because it started to talk about some of the limitations to the human site. Some errors are just made because we can't visually see what we need to see to not make the error. This is interesting because it is just something we have to deal with and can't really be changed unless we take more time to view every single thing we do.