The Design of Everyday Things- Chapters 3&4

Precise behavior can emerge from imprecise knowledge for four reasons.
Information in the world -information in the head and in the world
Great precision is not required- absolutes are seldom required in knowledge
Natural Constraints are present- worldly constraints/ physical constraints
Cultural Constraints are present- social behavior and cultural conventions

How many people could guess the right penny? Fig 3.1

Things I thought were interesting
"Procedural knowledge is largely subconscious"
"Want to do your friends a nasty turn? Do them a favor and clean up there rooms. Do this to some people and they will lose there ability to function."-personally I'm one of those people

Conspiracy against Memory
its said to find out that we have limitations in what we can remember, but I know I have problems remembering my social, bank numbers, phone numbers, security codes, birthdays

I wonder if that is true? The author said that he use to live in Texas and he said that he needed his Drivers license number to pay for food, telephone bills, If so that’s crazy. It’s enough to remember you’re social.

Interesting in how we organize certain things
1. Memory for arbitrary things

2. Memory for meaningful relationships
3. Memory through explanation

Page 73.That pocket size device that reminds you of appointment, and links to computers is here! It’s a phone, and with some software called sync it will sync up to your computer at the office, and you can excess all your information from emails, appointments, internet, telephone numbers, databases, and of course since it’s a phone you could also make a phone call. - Really cool stuff

3.3 Arbitrary Arrangement of Stove Controls- that how my stove is arrange and it sucks!

its interesting to read about the semantic and cultural constrains- Its amazing to me how much information can be gathered from this knowledge that is already known the same thing goes for logical constraints-from past experiences and a general knowledge on how to figure something out it is amazing what you can do

ahh more examples of bad design doors, switches, clocks