Reading Response

The article explains the importance of sociable technology and author’s suggestion of the design issues.

1. Brief introduction

In modern world, there are two controversial issues about using advance technologies. One issue states that using those technologies makes everyday life much easier and they must be widely used. Another issue, in contrast to the first one, believes that those technologies have many disadvantages and therefore it should not be used at all. Apparently, both issues are very critical on our technology development. Author has point out the possibility of sociable design to compensate both matters.

2. Description of contents

Author is presenting a real life example in order to prove the important of sociable design. In short words, there is a woman insert the parking ticket into the ticket machine, but the ticket machine wouldn’t return her ticket. Apparently, it is a normal phenomenon which it could happen to anyone.

Author also point out that, most designers are always assume machines working in perfect condition. They even contempt users in term of “fool proofing” and “idiot proofing” [1]. In additional, author also admits sometime, users may mishandle the ticket such as rumpled and touched.



Based on those factors, author suggests that machines need to be able to socializing with people. In another words, we should create machines are not just function well, but also can interactive with users. Hence, people can understand why the function fail and corporate with machines to finish the standard processes.

To investigate much deeper from this phenomena, author once again use a real life example about him try to back up his file. He finds out that the backup system is too complex and has to leave it to experts [1]. Hence, he realizes that human coexist with technology should be both way. Designers have to make sure machines interactive with users, but people also need to learn to understand the basic information in order to achieve communication with machines [1].

After that, author list some principals about sociable design. The key idea is “Interaction that is understandable, effective, and socialized in the sense that it recognizes the needs and desires of the people who interact with machines” [1]. In another words, if there is fail in processes, machines have to provide understandable information and communicate with users. Author took the testing products as example, the testing staff always put rule and conditions when they test machines; however rule and conditions are not even close to the real world situation.

Author also explains the “low level activity” and “high level activity” [1]. Low level activity is refers that machines only performance isolate tasks. And high level activity is refers the consequence of server task. For example, we are having enjoyable conversation with friends online. Hence, one of the important goals for social design is helping the machines understand some of the simple high level context. Moreover, designers have to identify which is the best on social purpose for the high level activates such as machines perform the sequence of tasks or multi-tasks at same time.



Another important principle for social design is interactive should not just limit between the machine and people, it also should interactive between machine and other machine [1]. A real life example also given by author, his computer updates and restart without saving his current working documents. It is true computers need to upgrade the anti-virus program, base on the circumstances, a notification or warning should be displayed. If there is no responding, computer need to save his working progress then restart.

Then, author the appearance is also part of the social technologies [1]. There are two examples with photo proof; first one is about conference room’s electric line distribution. Designers only think about effective of line distribution but he ignore the ugliness mess could also affect the conference. Second example is about tradition roof and modern roof. Tradition roof looks ugly, but modern roof looks batter and even saves energy. Hence, author success proof that appearance is not just for good looking but also provide economic purpose.

At last, author indicates that support for groups is another hallmark of sociable technologies [1]. The given example is a group of people have conversations in a function room with food and drink support. After that, they use the same room for formal meeting. Moreover, author point out social activity should also include the communication productions such as blog, e-mail.

3. Conclusion

Author points out the four themes of sociable technology such as communication, presentation, support for groups, and troubleshooting. All themes are well proved with real life example and photographic. The intended audiences are engineer and designers. Author focuses discussion on user’s perspective and lack of investigations on designer side.

Reference

1. Don Norman, 2008, “Sociable Design”, http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html