Preface

A few months ago, my son approached me with a problem. It was November, daylight saving time had arrived, and his watch was an hour fast. He was having trouble adjusting the time. Could I help? “Sure,” I said. He gave me the watch. By most standards, I am an expert in user interfaces. Modern watches have many features and just a few buttons. They have modes. I understand modes. Repeatedly press one button to cycle through the modes. Press and hold another button and the device is ready for change. That sort of thing. It might take some trial and error, but the task seemed simple enough. I was wrong. Try as I may, the watch resisted. I couldn’t change the time! I borrowed the watch and brought it to work. At the time I was teaching ...

Get Human-Computer Interaction now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.