Engineering topics

Norman, Donald A.

Publications and source records attributed to Norman, Donald A..

3 records

NASA NTRS1991

Language evolution and human-computer interaction

Many of the issues that confront designers of interactive computer systems also appear in natural language evolution. Natural languages and human-computer interfaces share as their primary mission the support of extended 'dialogues' between responsive entities. Because in each case one participant is a human being, some of the pressures operating on natural languages, causing them to evolve in order to better support such dialogue, also operate on human-computer 'languages' or interfaces. This does not necessarily push interfaces in the direction of natural language - since one entity in this dialogue is not a human, this is not to be expected. Nonetheless, by discerning where the pressures that guide natural language evolution also appear in human-computer interaction, we can contribute to the design of computer systems and obtain a new perspective on natural languages.

Grudin, Jonathan↗

NASA NTRS1991

Approaches to the study of intelligence

A survey and an evaluation are conducted for the Rosenbloom et al. (1991) 'SOAR' model of intelligence, both as found in humans and in prospective AI systems, which views it as a representational system for goal-oriented symbolic activity based on a physical symbol system. Attention is given to SOAR's implications for semantic and episodic memory, symbol processing, and search within a uniform problem space; also noted are the relationships of SOAR to competing AI schemes, and its potential usefulness as a theoretical tool for cognitive psychology.

Norman, Donald A.↗

NASA NTRS1989

The problem of automation: Inappropriate feedback and interaction, not overautomation

As automation increasingly takes its place in industry, especially high-risk industry, it is often blamed for causing harm and increasing the chance of human error when failures occur. It is proposed that the problem is not the presence of automation, but rather its inappropriate design. The problem is that the operations are performed appropriately under normal conditions, but there is inadequate feedback and interaction with the humans who must control the overall conduct of the task. When the situations exceed the capabilities of the automatic equipment, then the inadequate feedback leads to difficulties for the human controllers. The problem is that the automation is at an intermediate level of intelligence, powerful enough to take over control that which used to be done by people, but not powerful enough to handle all abnormalities. Moreover, its level of intelligence is insufficient to provide the continual, appropriate feedback that occurs naturally among human operators. To solve this problem, the automation should either be made less intelligent or more so, but the current level is quite inappropriate. The overall message is that it is possible to reduce error through appropriate design considerations.

Norman, Donald A.↗