Full blog on "Things That Make Us Smart"

Title: Things That Make Us Smart
Author: Donald. A. Norman

Summary:
The book starts out by stating that technology has a duality. Technology is what allows us to break our threshold of knowledge and become even smarter. However, technology can also make us dumber through complexity and seductive powers. The humans ability to be get distracted greatly limits how much we can do. Technology cannot be distracted so it allows us to do much more.

There are two modes of cognition.These modes are experiential and reflective. Experiential mode is the experts mode which deals with reflex and in the moment decisions. In order to have a good experiential design it should appeal greatly to our senses. Reflective cognition takes more time and is more involved. This mode can be thought of as planning or reconsidering.

There are three types of learning. These types are accretion, tuning, and reconstructive. Accretion learning is adding to what we already know and is painless and easy to do. Tuning is the art of practice and takes time. Accretion and tuning are experiential modes of learning.  Reconstructive learning is the hard part of learning and requires a lot of thought. Reconstructive learning is done in reflective mode.

Optimal flow is the idea of focused concentration in experiential mode. This flow can be used to learn quicker but is not mainly used in the school environment. This flow is usually obtained through hobbies. To take advantage of this idea in the school environment we need to figure out how to merge with entertainment to get this intense, focused concentration.

Norman also describe the ability to represent things to make us smarter. We become smarter because representation allows us to pass the threshold of knowledge that we experience as humans.There are different types of representation that can be used and each type can be used to fit a different person's tasks. These two types are surface and internal representation. Surface representation is something physical with no extra meaning behind what we can see. The example used is his book we are reading. Internal representation is where something is in the background we cannot see. The example used is a calculator.

Discussion:
The thing I like about this book is that Norman started with an idea we are all familiar with but then he expands the idea and explains the psychology behind it which I'm sure not very many of us are familiar with. I think the chapters are longer than they have to be which I stated in one of my summaries. I don't think he's rambling but I think he draws the concepts out for longer than he has to. I do still enjoy reading about these ideas because I feel that having an understanding of these concepts can help understand how people will react to certain situations and allow better design  for products in the future.