Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs along with the New Computing Technologies Ben Shneiderman, 2002. Camb...

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Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs along with the New Computing Technologies
Ben Shneiderman, 2002. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [ISBN -262-19476-7, 269 pages, including
index, $24.95 USD.]
Ben Shneiderman sees Leonardo da Vinci's ubiquitous notebooks, loaded with sketches, hypotheses,
and inventions, as models for a new, more humane form of computing--one that is much
morecreative and sociable, and universally usable. Imagining how Leonardo might build a hudl
accessories computer, Shneiderman pleads for any renaissance in the way we build and document
technology. He paints a practical utopia.
Building on more than a quarter century ofresearch and teaching, and consulting on human-computer
interaction, this book rises above the specifics of usability research, interface guidelines,
and debates about statistical significance. Getting the long view, Shneiderman argues that the old,
bad computing paradigm tended to emphasize technological progress, even though lots of confused
and frustrated users disliked the products. Too often, he says, these kinds of products had
"incomprehensible terminology, poor online assistance, and nasty failures" (p. 12).
The objective of new computing is to serve human needs, rather than to change people with
automation or robots, Shneiderman says. So if you find an interface confusing, speak up! He urges
people to loudly upbraid the perpetrators ofugly and unfriendly, and unusable products. But in case
you have a hand in making a high-tech product, he urges you to get creative.
He sees creativity at the heart of the design process--and at the peak in the pyramid of human needs.
In fact, he envisions software that can "enable a lot more people to be creative more of the time" (p.
208). So how? He sees three paths.
* One path emphasizes inspiration, the second of "Aha! " that comes after long preparation; so
Shneiderman yearns for playful software that encourages brain-storming, free association, and
alternative perspectives.

2. If scenarios insimulations and spreadsheets, and modeling software, * Another way to become
creative involves problem-solving; Shneiderman argues that software supports that process with
what-.
* A third approach views human context as the most important aspect of the creative process, so
Shneiderman likes software enabling collaboration with peers, advice from mentors, and emotional
support from friends and family. Dismissing everyday creativity (a whole new twist on a glossary
definition, say), Shneiderman hopes to find out software that brings together these three approaches
for what he calls evolutionary creativity--refining and applying existing paradigms or methods in new
ways.
To encourage evolutionary creativity, then, Shneiderman argues our computers should help us move
easily forward and backward through each of the following activities:
* Trying to find information
* Visualizing to understand and find out relationships
* Meeting with mentors and peers, getting ideas and support
* Thinking up new combinations of ideas through free association
* Exploring possible scenarios through what-if and simulation tools
* Composing artifacts or performances
* Replaying and reviewing sessions to reflect
* Disseminating leads to win recognition and to expand the resources open to other people within
the field
With this book, Shneiderman gives us interesting ideas on ways that computing can enable all of
these activities. He expands our sense of whatever we could be doing, with a breadth of vision that
can only come from experience, and a fondness for creative thinking like Leonardo's, though he fails
to provide specific guidelines.
He stresses human needs, not technological advances. So relationships come first, and then human
activities--a long time before instructions per second. True creativity gives people more control,

3. more options, more ways to reach out to others.
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To attain designs that will help people expand relationships, Shneiderman suggests that we envision
how our audiences move through their circles of relationship, from the interior world of the self,
outward to friends and family, then colleagues and neighbors, and finally the greater world of fellow
citizens and consumers in a global market-place. The relationships expand in size while shrinking in
the degree of interdependence, shared knowledge, and trust. As writers, of course, we wrestle with
the variety of audiences we face, and we find it hard to define our relationship along with them. On
the other hand, in the old computing world, designers found relationships disturbing, and
uncomfortable:
Focusing on relationships is actually a new direction for many people within the
computing field. After all, the essential notion next of the individual
computer was tied to the top degree of introversion among
information-processing professionals. (p. 83)
Having postulated four circles of relationship, Shneiderman summarizes the activities that users
desire to participate in:
* Collecting information (reading documents, listening to stories, exploring libraries)
* Relating (asking questions of others, engaged in meetings, joining dialogs, developing trust)
* Creating (brainstorming, visualizing and planning exploring alternatives, simulating outcomes,
discovering a design)
* Donating (disseminating what you have come up with, through reports, meetings, training and

4. events mentoring)
Based on this analysis, Shneiderman suggests a grid for fostering creativity through technology. The
four stages of human activity constitute the columns, and the four circles of relationship form the
rows. We can easily uncover human needs we may not otherwise have considered, expanding our
original meaning of our work and breaking out of preconceptions, by filling in the matrix for a
particular project.
To show how such a method might take us beyond mere usability, Shneiderman provides case
studies, describing how he, his students, and like-minded designers have applied some form of this
matrix to projects, making e-learning, e-commerce, e-healthcare, and e-government more
interesting, responsive and educational and democratic.
Grounded in actual design, his ideas are less visionary than those of Leonardo but more immediately
applicable on the job. Leonardo's laptop, then, ends up being an inspiring metaphor for the new
computing--an image of the we should be developing as participants in user-centered design, and a
reminder of what we must demand whenever we ourselves use technology.
JONATHAN PRICE runs The Communication Circle in Albuquerque, NM. An associate fellow of STC,
he belongs to the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He has coauthored Hot text: Web
writing that actually works, The best of online shopping, Fun with digital imaging, and How to
communicate technical information.