Reading Response 2 - Austin Morton

    The idea that hackers came up with to create a type of software “to represent action in which humans could participate” caught my interest because it literally gave birth to the notion of interface design. The article later goes on to relate back to the book “The Psychology of Everyday Things”, which I’m actually reading in my Science of Design class right now and helps me understand the idea the article is trying to put across. The idea that in order for a design to be effective it must be “human centered” (in Normans words) I thought was completely accurate. Until I read another article called “User Centered Is Off Center”, arguing that design is a nature of trade-offs, and always siding in the favor is not the right way to do things. The article suggests to find a means between the two and states, a designer “programmer/hacker” in this case must find a balance between “usability, reliability, and accessibility, which I think is right on point.

    The article describes almost a special kind of interaction pattern with technology that I can see in the everyday use of anything, one being the programs on my computer. In a single click I can open a new note that is already in a notebook labeled for the class that I’m currently in. Things like these very compatible programs help enhance out own capabilities whether its me becoming a more successful note taker, or figuring out short cuts to solving much larger things.

    Lastly, the article talks about taking an artistic outlook on design, which I found interesting.  It broke down an engineer’s point of view being a more logical perspective on one hand vs. Heckel’s view, which was many “visions” in which he later calls “visualizations”. It goes on to sum up the point that imagination is one of the short cuts through trail and error but someone without these ideas, can always rely on the more simplistic ones. I found this idea interesting and the example they used spot on, how someone can break down different ways of doing things (different ways of programming things) all within the constraints of there mind.