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Summary: If you want to take a step back from using PCs.......
Review: A very good book, in a very easy to read style. The author makes a number of good points about why PCs are such pigs to use. I've personally always felt that PC stood for "pig computer". I have always believed that where we are today with computers is where the automobile was in the early 1900's. Back then, you had to be part machinist, part chemist, part electrician, part mechanic, to run and keep your auto running. Today, you have to be part OS expert, part networking expert, part hardware hack, and part wizard to run and keep your computer running. The author uses a number of excellent models to show in the past how technology has disappeared to make our lives easier today. Thanks for a very good book.
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Summary: Important book for the IT industry
Review: An interesting book from somebody who is obviously a very smart guy. I'm willing to follow most of his arguments *because* he seems like a very smart guy and because, at times, he seems to have a lot of evidence to back up his ideas. The weakest points in his book for me, however, are the times where he's trying to an extend a metaphor without proper back-up in the way of solid evidence, but he still tries to present it as objective. Well-written, despite any flaws, and raises some fascinating issues about our technology business.
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Summary: How to produce human-centered technology.
Review: As I wrote "The Invisible Computer," I was struck bya paradox. On the one hand, there is very substantial agreement thatease of use and understandability are important. Similarly, good industrial design; simple, short documentation, and convenient, pleasing products are superior. I wondered why, if ease of use and understandability seems so important, much of the computer technology today violates all these things - yet the companies prosper. In fact, Apple Computer, the one company that tried hardest to make products that were easy to use, understandable and with sophisticated aesthetics driving both graphical design on the screen and industrial design of the products, has failed to win market share. So why is it that good products can fail and inferior products can succeed? This became the theme for the book. The story is complex: it takes a book to explain. But there are three themes. One: A successful product must be balanced: marketing, technology, and user experience all play critical roles, but one cannot dominate the others. Two: There is a big difference between infrastructure products, which I call non-substitutable goods, and traditional products, substitutable goods. With traditional goods, a company can survive with a stable, but non-dominant market share. Coke and Pepsi both survive. Cereals and soaps have multiple brands. With infrastructure goods, there can be just one. MS-DOS won over the Macintosh OS, and that was that. MS-DOS transitioned to Windows, and the dominance continued. VHS tape triumphed over Beta. Most infrastructures are dictated by the government, which assures agreement to a single standard. When there is no standard, as in AM stereo or digital cellular options in the US, there is chaos. Three: Different factors are important at different stages in the development of a technology. In the early days, technology dominates. Who cares if it is easy to use? All that matters is better, faster, cheaper, more powerful technology. In the middle stages, marketing dominates. And in the end, the mature stages, the technology is a commodity. User experience can dominate, user experience and marketing. As in soap and cereal. As in watches. Swatch sells its watches for their emotional appeal, not their accuracy: accuracy is taken for granted. The computer industry is now mature. The customers want convenience and value for their money. They want ease of use, emotional appeal. But the computer companies are all teenagers, resisting the pressures to grow up. Too bad. The customer is not well served.
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Summary: Required reading for Every CIO
Review: As usual Don Norman brings absolute logic and clarity to the ever confusing IT world. ---This book should be required reading for every CIO ---- Pure unadulterated 1 million % LOGIC. --- Worth its weight in Gold, like all his other great works
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting in some points, yet redundant
Review: Don Norman makes his point early on Chapter two about the current situation of computer technologies and what companies have done and should do about it. His examples are sometimes useful, but he didn't need to write 300 pages to explain something other people have said before and he could have reaffirmed in a long article.
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Summary: Well-argued perspectives on the future of PC design
Review: Donald Norman offers a no-holds-barred attack on the present state of personal computer design and marketing. He also offers a solution the the problems of PC complexity: Information Appliances. While I do not neccessarily agree with all of the criticsm hurled against the PC, The Invisible Computer is so readble that I find myself open to Norman's vision of the future.
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Summary: Way too long for the central argument
Review: Donald Norman seems to have taken up a position like that of Eric S. Raymond of Open Source, but in usability. This is a business-argument pitch for information appliances. It draws very heavily in its early chapters from the book "Inside the Tornado", I think by Moore.Inside the Tornado was a book adopted as Marketing Bible by my previous employer, an entrepreneurial venture in the digital imaging industry that may yet sink, but not because of the book. Inside the Tornado is right, but if you've absorbed it, you'll be irritated with the first half of this book.For people who read and appreciated his earlier books and are looking for interesting theoretical or experimental stuff on or near the topic of cognitive science will be disappointed. Don't buy this book for that reason.If you have only a weak grasp of information appliances, what they are, and why they're good, you will want to read this book.I wish someone else wrote this book, though.
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Summary: A very pertinent book!
Review: Having used a computer for the last 19 years, I do consider this book, i.e., The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution by Donald A. Norman to be very important. The fact is that computers have not become any more user friendly then back in the early 80's; ok, the graphics are better and we have a layer of added sound. However, when it comes to using the computer there are in fact new problems that did not occur before, e.g., a computer that operated in dos environment never showed the user the so called blue screen of death. Another problem is that (for the casual user, i.e., the stay at home mother or a person with limited computer knowledge) this machine is still viewed with skepticism and fear. Computers are also still very expensive (even though they have dropped in price, for the common person an investment of a $1000 is still considered to a huge amount of money). Mr. Norman is absolutely right that the solution will be inexpensive Information Appliances (we already see some of them, small appliances that only do email and in the future on can imagine a cell phone that doubles as an internet explorer, email, chat, two way radio, phone and pager all in one and for a very reasonable price, i.e., under a hundred dollars) that will help people in the world of technology and make the common person less afraid and embrace the ideas in this book, i.e., The Invisible Computer : Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution By Donald A. Norman.
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Summary: A verbose articulation of ideas described better by others
Review: His basic argument in this book is that the computer industry has matured to the point where it can no longer just cater to the early-adopter technologists and must appeal to the masses to continue growth. Unfortunately, the industry doesn't know how to do this and continues to deliver technology for technology's sake, leading to fat computers and technology that aren't that useful or appealing to most people, and are beginning to exhaust the technologists too. He introduces some recent, but standard models of technology adoption for discussing the problems, customer-centered design in cross-disciplinary teams (marketing, engineering, and user experience) for designing products that transcend the problems (explicitly discussing Contextual Design a few times), and "information appliances," multitudes of small, task-focused technology products that will replace our big, cumbersome, general-purpose (but not great at any) PCs. Norman's forte is definitely cognitive and experimental psychology in product design, and not being a technological or product development process visionary. I found very little new or interesting content in the book, and I don't think he articulated even some of the derived ideas very well. The whole book could have been condensed into a long magazine article. His prose is wordy and redundant, and the book is regrettfully lacking in many of the detailed case studies and examples he's used in previous books to elucidate his ideas. I want the idiosyncratic and outspoken psychologist professor back, such as he was in The Design of Everyday Things, or the powerful academic argument of Things That Make Us Smart. His short stint as a VP of HPs "Information Appliances" division, and his earlier work at Apple, was not enough to give him a deep understanding or insight into the problems of the current technology-product market. He does make some good book recommendations, however, and I'll add my favorite articulation of the problem, that I think articulate the problem and potential solutions much better: C. M. Christensen, _The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail_, 1997. G. A. Moore, _Crossing The Chasm: Marketingand Selling High-Tech Goods to Mainstream Customers_, 1991. T. K. Landauer, _The Trouble With Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity_, 1995.
Rating: 
Summary: Could Have Been Better
Review: I enjoyed the Psychology of Everyday Things. In this book, it was called Invisible Computer. I would have preferred he cover more about modern tools and why they could not be as useful as they seemed. User Experience was covered and that is one thing many folks here work with. I had to disagree with some of his examples. He stated that in a modern car, you only need a speedometer and a gas gauge. I would sure like to know if my transmission fluid, brake fluid and steering fluid are low. I would also like to know my radiator needs coolant, BEFORE I am on the side of the road with the hood up. I thought at times he was too desparate to state how we don't need as much technology as we have. People will use it if it is there. I didn't miss not having a microwave or a home computer until I got one. Overall, interesting to read, but had a hard time agreeing with much of it.
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