Phenomenology of Technics

Ihde says that technics is "the symbiosis of artifact and user within human action" (73). People want technology to be "total transparency," but they also want "the power, the transformation that the technology makes available" (75). The "design perfection is not one related to the machine alone but to the combination of machine and human" (74).

The study of usability has become important. Designers and developers are realizing that systems need to be as user-friendly as possible. Users want the system to reproduce their everyday activities (ie. filing out paperwork, filing folders, etc.), but they also want the system to do more than they could do in everyday life (ie. intelligently fill-in fields, interconnect records, instantly retrieve information, etc.). However, no system can do both, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The more the system tries to do (more "power"), the more the user realizes their lack of control, and the more the user most likely will need to check for errors. The user also doesn't want the system to do less work, which leaves more work for the user.