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p.2 How do people cope with such apparent disorder? ...Once the structure is revealed and understood, the complexity fades away... "Why is our technology so complex?" people continually ask me. "Why can't things be simple?" Why? Because life is complex.
p.10 When complexity is unavoidable, when it mirrors the complexity of the world or of the tasks that are being done, then it is excusable, understandable, and learnable.
p.11 The difficulty with the cry for simplicity is that many of our activities are not simple.
p.86 People function well when the devices they are using make things visible, provide gentle nudges, signifiers, forcing functions, and feedback.
p.89 Despite the complexity of the world, most of us manage to function quite successfully. We even manage well in novel situations, where we do not have the benefit of prior knowledge or experience... Social signifiers allow us to navigate in otherwise complex, potentially confusing environments.
A "signifier" is some sort of indicator, some signal in the physical or social world that can be interpreted meaningfully.
p.90 Signifiers indicate critical evidence, even if the signifier itself is an incidental by-product of the world.
p.101 Whatever their nature, deliberate or accidental, signifiers provide valuable clues as to the nature of the world and of social activities. For us to function in this social, technological world, we need to develop internal models of what things mean, of how they operate. We seek all the cues we can find to help us in this enterprise, and in this way, we all act as detectives, searching for whatever guidance we might find.
p.108 Social signifiers are valuable clues to the working of the world even though they are sometimes ambiguous, sometimes misleading. But they provide a powerful tool in our arsenal of clues that help us to make sense out of an otherwise complex world, helping us learn how to behave by observing the behavior of others, both directly and through their unintended but informative side effects.
p.227 a signifier is any perceivable sign for appropriate behavior, whether intentional or nonintentional.
p.228 Signifiers act like a natural part of the world, and so the communication can be effortless and appropriate. People use the world as a vast database of information, guiding them through the activities of the day. Much of the information needed for guidance is there, sometimes as explicit physical information, sometimes implicit, sometimes social indicators of appropriate behavior.
p.246 Complex things become simple... once the cues built into the system are discovered and used. [JLJ - ! What a great concept for a machine playing a game.]
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