Mistakes and Slips

"To err is human"

I thought this was a perfect title for this chapter. We are all human and we all make mistakes. I found it interesting that not every mistake is a "mistake." There is another word that fits a little better in certain instances, "slip".

"Slips result from automatic behavior, when subconscious actions that are intdended to satisfy our goals get waylaid en route. Mistakes result from conscious deliberations" (Norman, 2002).

 A slip is the most common form of error. A slip is when we intend to do something but accidentally do something else. This could be as simple as putting the bowl in the fridge and the milk in the sink. How many times have we all done something similar to this. It is nothing major we just make a simple error. It is also the same thing as when we type a word in our word document and it automatically corrects it if we spell it wrong. I know I make this error a lot. I intended to type 'people' but instead said 'peple' or something close to it and word automatically knows what we meant. This was a good design because it was designed to accommodate our slips. But sometimes that can backfire. Take autocorrect on you phone for instance. We all get a good kick out of reading texts that were corrected by the phone automatically but this is not a very well design. I am not saying they have to change it because I am not quite sure how they would fix this problem, but sometimes it can be quite a pain.

Citations:
Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic, 2002. 105. Print.