Reflections on Norman Prologue, Chapters 1 & 2, Vicente Chapters 1 &2

Intuition
It seemed almost impossible to log in today as I haven't used this blog nor my gmail account for over a year. Finally after many poundings on the keyboard, I found the memory in my own head to log in.
This was in direct violation of Norman's argument that my brain should have been prepared for such an endeavour. Sitting in my comfortable office chair in my well-lit main room, the smell of the brownies my sons made today still wafting in the air, with a full belly and a freshly brushed set of teeth I should have been ready to deal with armeggedon - but found myself pounding on the keyboard just to get started. It seems that even with the best of visceral conditions, stress can still occur.
I found it very interesting that while in class the instructional design left the visceral aspects of colour, aesthetics to last, Norman put great emphasis on it as a motivating and stress reducing factor in digital environments. This made me question, "Is there a finite order with which to proceed in developing Computer Based Learning Environments (CBLE)?" I am certain the answer will come in the chapters that follow.
With respect to Norman's optimal visceral conditions, while I agree that people should perform better under those conditions, how as the designer can I control for that in the users environment? Unless they are working in a lab under direct supervision, it seems a bit hard to control. Perhaps we can remind our users to light their favourite Yankee candle prior to sitting down to work.
Vicente's first two chapters seemed to reinforce the ideas presented in class that we must first think of needs not wants. Needs for the product in our lives, needs of the learners, needs of society.
However, both readings made me come to the realisation of the challenge that lies ahead in creating CBLE's as we have a massive responsibility to attempt to predict human nature, human intuition and all the foibles that humans have. This lead me to question "Can or does one technology fit all?" Again, the answer may come later.
One point I particularly appreciated was as technical sophistication increases so does the need for social interdependence of the instructional designer (Vicente, P41).
What bound the two chapters together was the entry point of designing motivation for instruction. Keller's (1983) ARCS model of Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction for developing learning environments I believe is strongly associated with Norman's and Vicente's work.
To conclude I return to Vicente's work (p35) when it came to setting up this new blog. Unlike the onboard oil check of the Mercedes-Benz, creating this blog did not cause me to think too much.

References

Keller, J.M. (1983). "Motivational design of Instruction", In C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.) Instructional Design Theories and Models:An overview of their current status" Hillsdale, NJ. Earlbaum.

Norman, D. (2005). Emotional Design. Basic Books, NY.
Vicente, K. (2004). The Human Factor. Random House, Toronto.