The future of design clearly lies in the development of smart devices that drive cars for us, make our meals, monitor our health, clean our floors, and tell us what to eat and when to exercise (p134).
I have to admit that my imaginary ideal future life is like what Norman mentioned in the above phrase. We currently live in an automatic world. Unconsciously, automation has changed the world a lot and it seems we could not go back any more.
It is an automatic world now, not automatic enough though. We are struggling for more advanced technologies to achieve automation in more fields which satisfy the infinite needs of ourselves.
I assent that a good starting point is to automate the things that we don’t want to spend time doing. I cannot count how many times I have been wasting on the house cleaning, grocery shopping (not for fun) and sorting out materials on laptop, etc. Specially, my occasional bad experience in the library makes me cry for automation when it took me more than 20 minutes to find a wanted book, sometimes without any result at all. Although they are sorted in a certain order by library staffs, we cannot avoid if someone before us just picks it and has a look, but later puts it back in a wrong place even on the same shelf. In this case, if the future technology, no matter in which form, could make it automatic, we absolutely save time on finding books. Instead, we could be able to put more effort on research which is more worth doing.
Augmentative tools are comforting, for they leave the decisions about activities to people. .. Autonomous devices can be useful when jobs are dull, dangerous, or dirty (p131).
In this chapter, Norman takes Mozer’s home as a fully automatic example and he personally would not want to live Mozer’s home, neither do I. I don’t feel comfortable if the systems always attempt to infer my intentions, sometimes make wrong decisions and conversely annoy me. I prefer augmentative tools at home, as I can take them or leave them, choosing those that I feel aid my lives, ignoring those that do not. By doing that, I could feel my ownership in my own house. Below is an example for smart home I found in a houseautomator-like website, but I would rather categorize it into an augmentative technology at smart home in the future. Although this cool canopy bed--home theater is seemingly designed by automatic philosophy, it gives us options to interact with it, not just simply infers our intentions nor determines by itself.
Automated Canopy Bed by Hi-Can - home theater, game room and an office---A specific control allows you to activate lighting blinds that close up, giving you the privacy that you deserve. If you’re not comfortable in bed, adjust the bedding controls, which move your bed into the-just-right position. The Hi-Can comes with a state-of-the-art sound system and a theatre screen that slides down to the foot of the bed. No need to leave home, you can have dinner and a movie in bed, or simply play the music that suits your mood. Plus, a built-in PC allows you to surf the web or do work while you relax. The Hi-Can canopy bed also boasts a full multimedia system with a game and entertainment console that connects to a projector and shows up on the theatre screen. This is truly a multifunctional bedroom.
Retrieved from http://www.houseautomator.com/arch/home-theater/
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