Science
Donald Norman provides an excellent treatise in the design issues surrounding usability. He focuses most of his effort on the design of physical products such as automobiles, home appliances and building components, however his attention to computer interaction design is very prescient considering the year of this book’s publishing.
This "review" is more of a sketch of notes I took while reading this book. Crandall, Klein and Hoffman deliver an intensely practical look into a realm of psychology that could be very difficult to comprehend. The book surrounds the notion of Cognitive Task Analysis which is essentially a method of studying how people think. Klein's work has surrounded primarily the way people make decisions (Sources of Power) however in Working Minds the authors also look at how people learn to do new jobs,
I have to admit that I get pretty geeked up about books like this one! In Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, Gary Klein addresses a phenomenal array of questions and issues surrounding the stated topic. Even though the book is written in the style of a research report, it is sprinkled with enough fascinating anecdotes that it will keep your interest even if you don't like that style. The stories make the reading easy, but Klein's approach to the material makes it interesting.
This book is a bit of a classic and in fact I found out recently that it was reprinted again in 2001. I read the 1975 version that the local university had in their library and while the book is over 30 years old, it still has a tremendous amount of value with regard to the thought processes that go into information systems. What follows is going to be less of a book review and more of a collection of random notes that I took as I read the book.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote "The Tipping Point" another book that I have on my list to read but I came to this one first. "Blink" is an interesting foray into the power of the unconscious mind... or rather unconscious thinking. Whether we realize it or not, our brains are working non-stop and sometimes we come to conclusions without knowing how or why. Gladwell's exploration of this topic is a detailed, anecdote-filled book that is a pleasure to read and will spark some interesting thoughts along
Copyright: 2006
Publisher: Viking Penguin
A fascinating look at the many facets of noise. This book has plenty of information for even the casually interested reader in the first half of the book. Topics covered include the legal issues of noise, the harmful effects of audible noise and the impact of new types of noise such as email spam. In the second half, the "professor" in Kosko comes out and he delves into some of the equally fascinating, if not technically more difficult aspects o