In the development of machines and software, design is used to mediate between anticipated user actions and machine states. Consider and respond to the following questions:
Who anticipates user actions? Designers? Users?
Are designers users? Can they be users if the technology has never been developed before? How do we design for what has never been done before?
How do we assess a design? How do we figure out if it works or doesn’t work?
When design, implementation and actual use are iterative steps in an ongoing overall design process, what can we say about our expectations regarding technology and its uses?
Do machines communicate, or do they display their states in ways designed to be meaningful for human observers and users? When an error code is presented by a machine, is it communicating, or does it require the participation of a human being to treat such displays as meaningful and communicative?
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