The care and feeding of users

As the technology matures, we face new lessons in frustration. One serious dilemma facing tool design is that, to be profitable, a tool must support the broadest possible diversity of users. This mindset has largely yielded dumb, monolithic, use-one-at-a-time tools. However, we are about to witness a profusion of complex tool systems wherein several autonomous tools simultaneously cooperate to assist you-in fact, they will probably compete ferociously among themselves for the privilege. The tools of the future will be intelligent, dynamically adaptive, customizable, and personalizable to a staggering degree. With experience, they will learn and grow and wear to fit the specific craftsman´s hand. Their complex functionality will be deeply couched in metaphor or story, and their internal operations will be hidden from view, until demanded. The emergence of complex, semi-autonomous tools underscores the importance of building good model of the user into the box