Lou Fuiano
ITI Spring 2006
Duff

The Design of Everyday Things
Chapter 3
Donald A. Norman

Free To Be

Last week we looked at a segment of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" wherein the Bushman made his way through life just by navigating the local surroundings and using only what was supplied. It seemed a simple and elegant life. Norman might refer to this as Natural constraints. The way the pieces fit, either by design or by nature. This also brings to mind instinct and intuition. Navigating through any environment by responding to basic cues in the surroundings. With most of us, this is an internalized knowledge that rarely needs an exactness or recitation.

This third chapter in Norman's book: Knowledge in the Head and Knowledge in the World, enters a rich terrain of how we learn through instinct and study. His breakdown of Knowledge in the World was particularly pointed. I suppose this is sometimes referred to as common sense or street smarts. He indicates that we have a certain knowledge of things just by doing, and thereby getting the necessary results. I myself sometimes feel as though I've "World Knowledged" my way through life with just this tactic.

Knowledge Of and Knowledge How is an excellent breakdown that drives this chapter. Knowledge of, "declarative knowledge", is how we get through a dedicated study of something. This topic generally has hard and fast rules. Knowledge how, procedural knowledge, is something more about the basic workings of something and how one performs therein.

It makes me think of a conversation I once had with a painter. She complained that the range of possibilities afforded her craft are so broad she often feels overwhelmed. We then began to compare the other art forms like music and dance and even writing. Unlike the purely visual arts, these seem to have a more implied structure. Norman's example of the poet going from village to village reciting "epic poems" was an excellent example of how we learn, create and forward information. The idea that the couplets, rhymes and rhythms enabled the speaker to get through a long piece by loosely putting everything together. Even though the speaker can think on his feet, the rhyme and rhythm create guidelines while making the narrative apply. Improvised music relies on these same basic principles. Time and rhythm instill a starting point. Listen for the notes surrounding the tonal center, and invent a melody from that. Our sense of time and harmonics provide the physical constraint and how it sounds to the musician and the listener provides the cultural and semantic constraint. There is a liberation in the structure. Or, as Norman points out: "The Power of Constraints."