Make-Up Blogs: #18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26

Book Reading #18: The Design of Everyday Things
Reference Information:
Title: Design of Everyday Things
Author: Donald Norman
Publisher: Basic Books (2002)

Summary: In chapter six of The Design of Everyday Things, Normand discusses the various factors working against a designer. These examples include the deadlines that designers have to work against, as well as their tendency to put the aesthetic qualities before functional qualities. He also spends a good portion of the chapter warning against feature creep.

Discussion: In my own personal projects, I've experienced feature creep through my own desire to make my project as useful as possible, so I can definitely understand a manager or project leader pushing more and more features onto designers. In recent years, I've tried to make sure that the number of features I include matches the GUI I present to the user, but it is still difficult to maintain a good balance.

Book Reading #19: Coming Of Age In Samoa
Reference Information:
Title: Coming of Age in Samoa
Author: Margaret Mead
Editors: Williams Morrow and Company (1928)

Summary: In chapter six of Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead discusses the two groups of young people in Samoan society. The young men are known as the Aumaga, while the women are known as the Aualuma. The Aualamua play the role of hostess in Samoan society, and generally do less work than the majority of other groups of women.

Discussion: The differentiation between ranks of Samoan society are very interesting to me. Modern western society has similar definite lines between childhood, teenage years, and adulthood, so it's interesting that Samoans also have similar differentiations.

Book Reading #20: Opening Skinner's Box
Reference Information:
Title: Opening Skinner's Box
Author: Lauren Slater
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (2008)

Summary: In chapter five of Opening Skinner's Box, Slater discusses the principle of cognitive dissonance. She describes various experiments which show that the more people observing an incident, the fewer people who react to it. The experiments range in severity, from the amount of money a person receives for participating in an experiment, to someone being attacked.

Book Reading #24: Emotional Design
Reference Information:
Title: Emotional Design
Author: Donald Norman
Publisher: Basic Books (2005)

Summary: In the opening chapter of Norman's novel Emotional Design, he discusses why attractive things generally work better. People are happier when using a device they find attractive, so they can often overlook minor design flaws in functionality. He illustrates this idea using his classic teapot example.

Discussion: Norman's books continue to be interesting. His opening chapter easily catches the user's attention, and provides several good examples.

Book Reading #25: Coming of Age in Samoa
Reference Information:
Title: Coming of Age in Samoa
Author: Margaret Mead
Editors: Williams Morrow and Company (1928)

Summary: Mead discusses the role that dance plays in Samoan culture. Unlike most activities in Samoan culture, people of all age groups can participate in the group dances. She discusses the three main styles: Taupo, the dance of boys, and the dance of jesters.

Discussion: I found the level of importance that dancing plays in Samoan culture very interesting. There are several areas that I've observed American and Samoan culture overlapping, but this particular area does not seem to be the case.

Book Reading #26: Opening Skinner's Box
Reference Information:
Title: Opening Skinner's Box
Author: Lauren Slater
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (2008)

Summary: In the seventh chapter of Opening Skinner's Box, Slater discusses drug addiction. The experiment centers around curing a rat of a morphine addiction by putting it in a "perfect" environment, where all of it's needs and desires are taken care of. Once the rat's need for anything were removed, it no longer felt a need to take morphine.

Discussion: I'm skeptical of how transferable the results are to humans. Our hierarchy of needs is much more complex than a rat's, and it would be hard to create a "perfect" environment in which humans feel their self-actualization needs and desires were being taken care of.