From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Bob Jacobson)
Subject: Re: PUB: Toward Human-Centered Design, Donald Norman, TECH REVIEW, Jul
Date: 13 Jun 1993 19:36:42 GMT
Organization: Sci.Virtual-Worlds Moderators, University of Washington



In article <1vft0rINNui@news.u.washington.edu> ib@ivan.asd.sgi.com
(Ivan Bach) writes:

>In article <1vf29aINN53d@news.u.washington.edu> 
>cyberoid@stein.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:
>
>> A fine article... Highly relevant to the designers of virtual worlds and
>> and the technologists who support their work.
>
>I don't think that an article about a human-centered design is higly
>relevant to the designers of virtual worlds.  If you look at the
>designs humans have produced over the last few centuries for the real
>world, those designs were mostly human centered.  For the first time
>in history, we have the technology to start creating other types of
>worlds which may be quite different from the real world.  Why should
>the designs for those worlds be human centered?  If you can be of any
>size in a virtual world, and you can fly as fast as you want to from
>one place to another, why should buildings in that world have doors
>designed for the size of a human body in the real world, why should
>buildings have roofs, why should walls be opaque and impenetrable,
>etc?  Buildings are usually construted to protect human beings and/or
>their possessions from the phenomena characteristic of the atmosphere
>on Earth.  Why do you need buildings in worlds in which there are no
>human beings, no human possessions, and no atmosphere?

My colleague Ivan confuses human-centered design, the design of
human-made things so that they can be more easily used by human
beings, with anthropocentrism, the perception of the world as if it
were design strictly for human consumption.  Human-centered design
merely means that the technology we create should conform, in some
reasonable manner, to the ways that human beings work.  Otherwise,
it's not very useful technology ... which is, in fact, the argument
that many people are making today about information technology.  It is
also the argument most often made against virtual worlds by those who
would otherwise become clients: "We've seen the cartoons, now give us
something useful."  

This isn't to say that usefulness means doing things as they've always
been done, only that for a thing to be useful, it has be capable of
being used by human beings.  I would disagree that most things over
the last several centuries have been human-centered in design, by the
way.  With the dying of crafts and their replacement by industrialism,
human-centeredness has been in serious decline.

>Years ago I studied the problem of creating artificial beings.  I came
>to the conclusion that an artificial being will have the same kind of
>intelligence, have a similar set of values, understand the world the
>same way, and act the same way as human beings only if that being
>either has a human body or is under the impression that it has a human
>body, and either goes through all the phases of the development of a
>human being (birth, childhood, adulthood, etc.) or is provided with
>all the information that will convince it that it has gone through
>those phases.  If those conditions are not met, you will end up with
>an artificial being that has an intelligence, set of values, etc.,
>that are alien to human beings.  Since it will be incredibly difficult
>to create artificial beings that will be like human beings in all
>respects, I think that most if not all artificial beings will be quite
>different from human beings.

Creating artificial beings is not the purpose of human-centered
design.  In a sense, you propose creating AI-like agents, do you not?
If so, you're correct, there's no need to take humans into account,
... unless your agents are supposed to interact with and help humans.

>Is that a problem?  Let's assume that you create a highly-intelligent
>and immobile information system or being, something like that Colossus
>system from S/F novels.  You put such a system in control of nuclear
>or even more powerful weapons, and then you ask that system to solve
>the problem of hunger in Africa.  That system may use some of the
>weapons under its control to solve the problem of hunger in an
>unexpected way.  That system needs to know that human beings usually
>value the lives of other human beings.  If a system like Colossus is
>brought to trial, I am sure that its lawyer will argue that Collosus
>did not have a normal childhood, that it was frequently abused by its
>"parents," and that it was not aware of what it was doing.

I don't follow the argument.

>How are you going to fill virtual worlds with all kinds of new
>designs?  A human being could manually design each "blade of grass"
>and other objects.  Alternatively, you could use an automated method,
>such as genetic algorithms or fractals, to design objects and beings
>in a virtual world.  Does Donald Norman really expect that those
>designs will be human oriented?  I think that they will be very
>strange, weird, and alien to human beings.  They will be perfectly
>natural to the artificial beings who produce those designs for their
>own use.  Genetic algorithms tend to adapt whatever is available to
>whichever conditions exist in a given environment.  The probability of
>a natural evolution producing human beings after they become extinct
>is vanishingly small.  The probability of an artificial evolution
>producing human beings or anything like human beings is probably even
>smaller.

Again, there are all sorts of fantasies we can pursue for personal
enjoyment and edification.  Design strives to create things that
people will buy and use well.

>Since no virtual world will contain any real human beings, the only
>reason to use a human-centered design will probably be to make virtual
>worlds more acceptable and attractive to human beings (more
>user-friendly when users are human beings).  I see a trend towards
>less human-centered design in the area of virtual reality, not more.
>Future generations of children or whatever will see who is right.

"Less human-centered design" is already prevalent in the field of
computational machinery and technology generally.  It's why most
people still do not use computers, let alone more complex machinery.
Keep it up, and we will pass into irrelevance.

Bob Jacobson