The document provides information about an information and communication technologies course including the professor, YouTube video, job opportunities with a student agency, and chapter summaries about the psychopathology of everyday things and the psychology of everyday things. It also includes tweets about attribution errors and blame when using technology.

1. Comm / INFO 2450
Communication and Technology
Professor
Drew Margolin

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6A331B1oq8

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4. 2450 News

5. Chapter 1 – The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
• everyday objects filled with design issues
• we interact with them deeply, unconsciously, constantly
• typically people blame themselves
• good design is rare but achievable
Everyday-ness

6. Chapter 1 – The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
Affordances
Visibility
Mappings
Feedback
Conceptual Models
High-Level Principles
Everyday-ness

7. Conceptual Models
People will make sense out of any information you give them
This is bad, because they jump to all kinds of crazy conclusions
But this is also good, because it means they can be easily trained to
understand new technology with the right affordances and signifiers
as cues

8. Chapter 1 – The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
High-Level Principles
Everyday-ness
Conceptual Models
Design Model
User Model
System Image

9. Design Models and User Models
Do they work in exactly the same way?
Are there clues to how they are different?

10. Design Models and User Models
Do they work in exactly the same way?
Are there clues to how they are different?
Does this thing get involved?

11. TweetReport
Not much about the gulfs!

12. TweetReport
Attributions – Unavoidable yet Erroneous
elee2450 Even though I'm an engineer, sometimes I find myself using 'folk
theories' to explain my observations
Julisilva2450 We're taught that causation isn't correlation but I often find
myself assigning causes to events as a means of explanation.

13. TweetReport
Whose fault is it, really?
mmfj2450 I think our society encourages the notion that users (not the
device/designer) are to blame for any errors with technology.
carmichael2450 Maybe it isn't my fault that I can't always use motion sensor
faucets correctly... #ChapterTwo #SystemErrorNotHumanError
mmeehan2450 Thanks to Norman, I no longer have to feel incompetent
when I can't figure out how to use a product -- or do math?
lwidom2450 If only 1 in a billion people has a 'design-based problem' why
can't we call it 'human error?' Norman deflects too much blame.

14. • We are explanatory creatures
• Blame is social
• Stages of Action
Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Everyday Things

15. Explain this!

18. We’re explanatory creatures
• “It’s a virus”
• “It’s my hard drive”
• “It’s a Thursday!”
Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Everyday Things

19. Attribution:
a mental explanation for why
something occurred
• May be conscious or
unconscious
• Articulated or tacit
• Based on mental models and
naïve theories
Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Everyday Things
bzhou2450: Astrology; good luck charms; rituals to do better in competition.
Superstition is a prime exle of cause-seeking at work.

20. Mental Models
• Built from:
– limited experience
– common knowledge
• Favor temporal proximity in assigning causality
• Particularly poor for novel situations
Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Everyday Things

21. What’s the Explanation?

22. My Experience
1. On vacation, phone won’t re-charge
to more than 53% overnight
2. Battery manager says “Twitter” is
consuming 57% of my power
4. [couple of hours later] … Phone still
isn’t charging well
5. Battery manager still says “Twitter” is
consuming a lot of my power
7. Next day: Phone still isn’t re-charging
Last Year’s Case of the Dying Battery
Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Everyday Things
My Attributions / Actions
3. I go to Twitter and shut it off
(Twitter app has been giving me problems anyway)
6.  I conclude: Twitter is “broken”!
Aggressively shut it down in every
way possible
Any guesses?

23. Personal example: This Year’s Case of the Dying Battery
Chapter 2 – The Psychology of Everyday Things
My Experience
1. Let phone run down to low power
2. It’s happening faster and faster
4. [couple of hours later] … Phone still
isn’t charging well
5. Website tells me you have to restart
phone every so often because
Google “runs processes” or
something
7. It works!
My Attributions / Actions
3. I download some new battery mgr.
Tells me %’s – so what?
4. Finally search – “Android battery
losing charge”
(
6. I do it.

24. Chapter 1 – The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
So whose fault is it?

25. Blame is comprised of two elements:
The attribution of a physical cause
– Based on mental model of the
technology
Role responsibility
– Based on normative expectations for
competence and appropriate behavior
The Blame Game
QWang2450 Older people tend to blame themselves more when they encounter
technical difficulties. Younger people like blaming designs.
“Now I know what happened”
“Who was supposed to know”

26. I should know They should know
Don’t drop phone in toilet
to update new phone w/
contact phone #’s from old
don’t click on weird links/attachments
to identify “attachments” for people
To type in / not type in a password over the web?
The Blame Game

27. • Blame is a normative
interpretation
• No technically “right”
place to blame
The Blame Game

28. • Can be renegotiated
through cultural change
The Blame Game

29. • Shifts in blame…
The Blame Game
jswannie2450: I wish online ordering offered more immediate feedback so
that I don't press 'place order' twice (and get charged twice)

30. User
He means, my whole
mental model of the
app is shattered
Google Play for gflash

31. BREAKOUT
Your friend’s e-mail got hacked
What’s a possible cause?
Who is responsible?
-- What would make it the designer’s fault?
-- What would make it your friend’s fault?
-- Is your friend helpless?
-- Do they have a “right” to be?
5 minutes – include names on report