The Design of Everyday Things: The Psychology of Everyday Actions
2012.10.06
The lines each of us picked as the most important
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just really bad with machines." (53)
The easier and more trivial the task looks, the more people blame themselves. It is as if they were bragging that they have no ability to handle machines — insisting that the fault is their own. (54)
Not the fact that people hold wrong theories, but the fact that every person forms a theory (mental model) to explain the phenomena they observe. (Psychology: the theory of cognitive dissonance.)
Rather than the content being difficult, it is because we teach in such a way that difficulty at one stage affects the next stage. (63) (e.g., mathematics)
Errors should be easy to discover, the resulting loss should be minimized (fast fail), and, if possible, the consequences of the error should be easy to recover from (intuitive learning).
The difference between the problem-solving ability of a beginner and an experienced person
Takes action unconditionally or asks right away.
VS Recognizes their own position, observes and touches things, minimizes the number of possibilities, and then asks or takes action.
Related info 01/
EPL (Educational Programming Language)
An educational programming language is a programming language that was not created to solve practical problems, but was made for educational purposes: Smalltalk, Squeak, Etoys, Scratch. * wikipedia.org
Scratch 1-1/
An EPL developed by the MIT Media Lab in the U.S., Scratch is a programming tool for building intelligence and creativity in children aged 8 and up. Built on the Spiral model, it lets young students repeatedly go through the process of putting thoughts into practice and sharing them, so as to grow creative habits. It is supported by Intel, Microsoft, the LEGO Group, and Nokia. (Explanation of errors and suggested fixes is somewhat weak.) * http://www.scratch24.co.kr/
Imagine -> Build -> Modify -> Share -> Reflect -> Imagine (continuous imagination through reflecting many opinions) -> Build...
Opinions and case studies 1-2/
Analyzing the effect of each stage of the problem-solving process on project completeness, the problem-finding factor was found to have a significant effect on project completeness. * http://janggoons.kr/wp/archives/641
In schools that want to train high-quality IT talent, a programming education method that is often easily chosen is to have students write programs using the programming languages that many people are currently using. If you look at most Korean universities, they teach C or Java in programming education and use them as practice languages. But the disappointing thing about this curriculum is that the focus of what should be taught in programming education is set on the surface. You may find this surprising, but the languages in wide use right now are not faithfully reflecting the important achievements of today's programming technology. Because of that, students taught only this way are likely to end up chasing after the latest short-lived fashions in software, or to lean toward short-lifespan programming techniques. The global top-tier software talent pool will now be built of people who have tasted the core of technological trends, and a curriculum like the above is not desirable for thickening that pool. The surface always changes, and its shelf life is short. We may busily build and reshape the curriculum with today's programming languages, but the shelf life of what students learn will inevitably be as short as that surface that changes constantly. A training program that can only produce a soccer team that runs hard but cannot win, you might say. * http://ropas.snu.ac.kr/~kwang/paper/position/edu.html
Related info 02/
Cognitive dissonance theory is a theory proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s. * wikipedia.org
Values 2-1/ "Stealing cannot be accepted under any circumstances"
Values are important because they affect our perception. Depending on what each individual values more, the exact same reality can be perceived in entirely different ways. And perception affects decision-making, and affects individual action. So values matter in the sense that differences in values affect individual behavior within an organization, motivation, and attitude toward work.
Attitude 2-2/ "I like my job"
Attitude means a learned tendency to respond consistently — positively or negatively — to a certain person, object, or situation. Attitudes, like values, are formed under some degree of genetic influence. They are influenced a lot by the attitudes of parents, friends, and teachers in childhood. However, while values tend to be stable throughout life, attitudes are known to be somewhat more changeable. Attitudes have one important trait. People want their attitudes to be maintained as consistently as possible, or at least to look consistent (consistency of attitude). When a mismatch appears between the attitude someone holds and the behavior they show outwardly, they end up using various means to resolve that dissonance and maintain consistency.
Cognitive dissonance theory 2-3/ "I have to make a living too"
Cognitive dissonance theory means that people feel uncomfortable when their ideas, beliefs, or convictions are not in harmony with each other, and tend to want to resolve that even if it requires changing their attitude. There is a person who agrees that tax evasion is wrong. This same person might, while doing their year-end tax return, juggle numbers to work in their favor. At that moment, the mismatch between attitude and action makes the heart uncomfortable. The person wants to resolve the dissonance. How strongly someone feels the need to resolve cognitive dissonance depends on these factors: how important the thing causing the dissonance is to me (importance), how much influence I have in eliminating the dissonance (influence), and what the reward is for accepting the dissonant behavior (reward).
Related info 03/
There are three types of attitudes dealt with in organizational behavior theory.
Job satisfaction 3-1/
A general attitude about one's own work is called job satisfaction.
Job involvement 3-2/
How well you grasp the work you are in charge of, and how much you consider performing that work well as a way of raising your own value. The higher the job involvement, the lower the turnover rate.
Organizational commitment 3-2/
If job involvement is the degree to which you are conscious of a specific task, organizational commitment is the degree to which you are conscious of the entire organization. The most reliable predictor of turnover is organizational commitment. Even if you are not very satisfied with the work you are currently responsible for, if your sense of belonging at the organizational level is high, you will bear the situation and look to the future. But someone who has little will to be loyal to the organization itself considers resigning.
