What Norman does in this reading is to emphasise the last line (like I mentioned in my previous response) of chapter 1 in The Design of Everyday Things, that clever design can minimise the paradox of technology.
What I find useful in this reading is that he goes back to look at the idea of aesthetic and how that relates to usability. Though in the last reading a lot of mention of the aesthetic side of design seemed to be considered to be bad or harmful to the utility of the object, here, Norman describes the opposite.
Perhaps controversially, I agree with both of his assertions for I believe that it really depends on the object that you are making and who is using it and for what purpose the object will serve. In this reading, he asserts that “good design means that beauty and usability are in balance”. Okay, but some objects don’t require the beauty aspect. But then again, there are other ones that require both beauty and usability for consumers to purchase them. I guess Norman, from the readings, gives us two perspectives on the design of objects, in which he recognises that psychology, whether of the inventor or for the user, plays a large role in dictating how effective the design of the object is.