Notes on "Living with Complexity"

[kelleyP]

4.27.2011 // Living with Complexity, Donald A. Norman
Next Book: The Ten Faces of Innovation, Tom Kelley (May 25th)
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Great seeing everyone again tonight. Apologies to any rapper's names
who may have been misspelled below :) - kkp
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OVERVIEW
- Most people are probable already familiar with the ideas in the book
- Norman says the world is complicated - simplicity is a mental state;
coupled with understanding when the options match the person's
conceptual model
- Simplicity & complexity are not necessarily opposites
- It's OK to be complex, but not confusing; needs to match the user's
mental model

THINGS WE LIKE
- Book challenged some of my own thinking
- The relationship between marketability & complexity; people see
value in complexity (is this just an American phenomenon?)

NOTES
- With a new luxury car, they make it complex, but give you the tools/
training to use & appreciate them
- Jeppeson standardized their interfaces to help pilots fly from
country to country w/o having to learn a new system; however, in air-
traffic control, users are allowed to customize their interface
(making it almost completely unusable
- Slow food movement; Mac-n-cheese is simple, but what's the value
- What are the trade-offs, in where we manage the complexity? Who's
going to deal with the complexity?

- When specking out insurance apps on a past project, there were lots
of assumptions on how people were making decisions. Business rules
were so complex that they ended up abandoning the project - in the end
it was cheaper to have the human do the processing over automating.

- If you're trying to mitigate human error, it might be worth
automating.

- When building a tool that lets anyone do statistical analysis,
assumption is that the user doesn't know much about statistics or
they'd do it themselves. In post talk analysis, there has to be a
description of the end product so the user can present it back and
understand what went into the analysis.

- How do you design for distraction - and account for things like kids
running around in the user's real environment?

- "The Media Equation" (Lys & Ryan's favorite book) - people prefer
specialists vs. generalists (i.e. you would trust a news channel more
than a channel that had news + tons of cartoons)

- Do you have the one photobucket app that captures photos, one that
view, one that XYZ or one that does it all?
Facebook's app is really an app within an app (per "Tapworthy")

- Why would you use a remote when you can do EVERYTHING from your
phone? "Because I'm not trying to do everything!" (Elias' girlfriend)



FUTURE PLANS FOR UXBC
- Discussion at the IA Summit around how small the UX community is and
how strange it is that we don't know each other
- Do we need/want an umbrella UX group to tie the community together?
How can we make a more cohesive community? Start a new group? Cross-
pollinate a few times a year? Social events?
- Please fill out the survey to have your say ; )


ICEBREAKER // What's be your UX rapper name?
Travis - T. the Mind-Rapper
Matthew - Mental Mattie
Rupa - Legit Soopa Dupa Rupa
Susan - Suzability
Ami - Grand Master Ami & the Empathy HTML5s
Heather - Space'n H
Kim - Wireframinator X
Kelley - Soopa Gridz
Dave - Sir Interacts-a-lot
Lys - Queen Lux
Kristin - E.Z. See
Alison - Paprika Freeka
Rich - R.A.P.
Chase - Ol' Dirty Heat Map***winner***
Elias - User Perstoner
Ryan - AB'user
SuAnne - D.J. Sleezeframe
Mike C. - D.J. Feelings
Mike R. - Analicious (think Analyze)