Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies

Citation

Line, M.B. (2003), "Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies", The Electronic Library, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 174-175. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470310470598

Forget Leonardo, universal genius though he was, with an imagination that ranged well beyond what was achievable, his only role in this book is to furnish an intriguing title and reproductions of mainly irrelevant drawings and paintings, and to be dragged in at various places with such sentences as “Leonardo would have smiled in recognition at ...”.

The book is a plea for computer systems to be designed round the needs of people – what the author calls “the new computing”, in contrast to “the old computing” – the incremental enhancement of computer power, capacity and complexity. “Information and communication technologies are most appreciated when users experience a sense of security, mastery, and accomplishment … The challenge of technology developers is to more deeply understand what you, the user, want.” As one who has for decades pressed for library and information systems to be designed around users, I could not agree more.

There are plenty of examples of faulty systems and user‐hostile design that lead at worst to disaster and at best to delay, frustration and failure. The number of hours wasted by the average heavy user in trying to sort out what has gone wrong and finding out how to put it right must be huge – the equivalent of at least one day a month. At the same time, computers can do lots of things that only one person in 1,000 needs them to do. One of the largest subject areas in publishing now consists of books explaining how to use computers, and computer courses are burgeoning.

The book deals successively with the quality of user interfaces; the need for usability to be universal – to cater for diverse users; the need for public pressure for better systems and sound evaluation processes involving real users; and understanding human activities and relationships. The last‐mentioned chapter is much more limited in scope and examples (it deals mainly with photographs) than one would have hoped, for an understanding of user psychology is fundamental to user‐friendly design. Some needs are obvious; as Shneiderman says, doctors would clearly welcome help in making more accurate diagnoses, and patients would like to be more in control of their illnesses and treatment. But informed guesswork often has to be used. People frequently cannot say what they want until they see what can be done: how many expressed a need for mobile phones before they were invented? I would, therefore, see the future not so much in terms of “old” versus “new” computing but as the two working in tandem.

Shneiderman then identifies four “directions for near‐term innovations”: e‐learning, e‐business, e‐healthcare, and e‐government. Ambitiously, he wants computers to support creativity in all fields, practical as well as artistic and scientific; as he says, computers cannot create, they can only aid creation. He ends with questions and proposals relating to bigger goals, for example conflict resolution.

While the author’s basic thesis is obvious once it is stated, it needed to be stated, and this he does very effectively and readably, if his style is somewhat folksy. I hope his vision can be fulfilled. Meanwhile, we can make our small contribution to public pressure for user‐oriented design: let us all moan and keep on moaning.