“People invariably object and complain whenever a new approach is introduced into an existing array of products and systems. Conventions are violated: new learning is required.”
— Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
The only constant in life is change. That is a given. Day turns to night and night into day. We continue in a forward motion, despite our best attempts to hold onto the past.
“If we only kept the old, we would never improve,” according to Norman (150).
Looking back on when I first began my undergraduate degree, I used a Hewlett Packard laptop. It was big. It was bulky. It was so darn heavy - and it lived in my dorm room. That “laptop” was a desktop and never made it to class. Today, I am never without my Apple computer, and I barely notice its existence in my bag. If my graduate school classes weren’t online … you bet I would have it with me, jotting down notes during a lecture. Nowadays, I can type faster than I can write. That is progress!
Looking back further into my high-school days, we wrote all of our papers in Microsoft Word. They were saved to disks and hard drives for safe keeping. You did not want to leave home without your disk. Today, I use Google Drive and can access my documents from any computer by logging into Google’s cloud-based service. Things are looking up!
Looking back can also be looking forward.
According to Norman, mixed systems are confusing to everyone (Norman, 149). This is why a transition plan for implementation of a successful design is so important.
“When a new way of doing things is vastly superior to another, then the merits of change outweigh the difficulty of change.”
— Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
When backing up a vehicle, safety is the number one priority. Mirrors assist us in this process, but the development of cameras help to fill in the additional voids. Phasing on backup cameras required for vehicles began on May 1, 2016 models and are scheduled be at 100% May 1, 2018, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
So whether you are backing up, looking forward or up to the cloud, we are always moving, learning and creating for a better tomorrow.