Skip to Content
Designed for Use
book

Designed for Use

by Lukas Mathis
June 2011
Intermediate to advanced
344 pages
8h 35m
English
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Content preview from Designed for Use

Limitations of Contextual Interviews

Humans can do something almost no other animal can: they can imagine themselves in hypothetical situations. In his book Stumbling on Happiness [Gil07], Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert explains that “the greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future.”[5]

Although thinking about the future is indeed a great achievement, the unfortunate fact is that we’re quite bad at it, as we saw in the Atari Lynx story in the previous chapter. Gilbert notes that “we make a systematic set of errors when we try to imagine what it would feel like if.”

His explanations of why this ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Lukas Mathis
How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy

How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy

Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath, Ina M. Sebastian
Are You an Authentic Leader or an Authentic Jerk?

Are You an Authentic Leader or an Authentic Jerk?

Hannes Leroy, Michael A. Daniels, Kristin L. Cullen-Lester, Alexandra Gerbasi

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781941222980Errata