Don Norman
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Don Norman. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Don Norman's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The door I couldn't figure out was my own product.
Three weeks before CES, Napster Station existed as a working prototype — functional, responsive, technically sound. People walked up to it, stood there, and walked away. Not because the AI didn't work. Because nothing about the object told them what to do with it. No handle. No signifier. No invitation.
I had spent so much time collapsing the distance between imagination and artifact that I forgot the artifact still had to meet a stranger. The machine understood me perfectly. It understood nothing about the person standing in front of it for the first time.
That failure sent me back to a book I hadn't touched in years. Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things
