John Maeda, now president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) had a public, semi-moderated discussion with me at a PARC Forum. The video is now available. I wanted to talk about complex design: interaction design, design planning, etc. He wanted to talk about the beauty of fonts, of knives, and even of the office chair. I tried to say these were simple products that barely needed any understanding of human behavior and cognition -- I want to design the complex. He didn't understand my point. In fact, when I specifically asked him how to design a networking connection scheme that would work for everyday people his answer was a long ramble that never even started to address the issue. So we failed to connect. But many seemed to find the discussion of interest. Decide for yourself.

Gerd Waloszek of SAP User Experience has written a very nice, intelligent review of Living with Complexity. He neatly summarizes the major theme thusly: "Norman's book is entitled Living with Complexity for good reason: The author does not advocate substituting complexity with simplicity. (As we will see below, this would not also make sense to Norman, because he does regard simplicity and complexity as opposites of each other: The first is, according to him, a state of the mind, whereas the other is a state of the world.) Much like Shedroff, Norman points out that complexity is an essential ingredient of the world and, thus of our lives. Norman writes that technology reflects this complexity, which by itself is neither good nor bad: it is confusion that is bad: We will see order and reason in complexity (and in complex technology) when we understand the underlying principles. When complexity is random and arbitrary, we are confused and have reason to be annoyed." Read the full review. It is long and thoughtful.

I was interviewed by Neil Briscoe for an article in IrishTimes.com: Is the love affair about to end? "Are cars as we know them to become a thing of the past?" asks the article. Where is the room for "Driving passion"? The question, Briscoe points out, is whether we can continue to have single people driving around, each in a ton and a half of metal.

This is a short, 3 minute video, that captures the dilemma of modern education. Engineering education has become narrower and deeper. We teach and train specialties and specialists. Practical applications require tying together the knowledge of the many specialties. They require generalists, people who have broad, integrated understanding of the world. We need an educational system that rewards those who are broad and knowledgable as well as those who are deep and narrow, even if the broad knowledge comes at the expense of shallow depth. Being narrow is just as big a liability as being shallow. We need both kinds of people. Alas, the university hires, teaches, and trains only the deep and narrow.

This essay shows the continuing saga of opinions about Microsoft's new 8 series: Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8 on tablet and desktop. Summary: At first I was enthusiastic. Now I have more nuanced opinions. This has several updates to an earlier interview with me about Microsoft's Windows 8 And Mobile 8. Dave Needles of TabTimes published an interview with me in February, 2012. Now, on March 23, 2012 he has released a second column based upon that interview. In this note I update my earlier release and give the relevant background information. The main message is still the same: Microsoft is back. Windows 8 for the phone is brilliant. But they tried to extend its principles to tablets, laptops, and desktop machines (and larger -- for example, Surface), whether operated by gesture, mouse and keyboard, or stylus. Bad idea. They have done a powerful rethinking of interaction in the age of gestures, touch screens, and Kinect. But they have completely failed in their application to the desktop.

Steelcase celebrated its 100th anniversary by asking 100 people to write essays about their dreams for the next 100 years. It is an impressive list of people and i am honored to be one of them. My essay, my dream is "the rise of the small." Here is the start: I dream of the power of individuals, whether alone or in small groups, to unleash their creative spirits, their imagination, and their talents to develop a wide range of innovation.

Out with the Old, In with the New: A Conversation with Don Norman & Jon Kolko, mediated by Richard Anderson. The item contains photos, a transcript, and an embedded video of the event. Topics addressed included the nature of and the difference between art and design, whether design should be taught in art schools (such as AAU), Abraham Maslow, usability, what design (or all) education should be like, the problem with "design thinking" courses, the destiny of printed magazines and printed books, aging and ageism, the relationship between HCI and interaction design, Arduino, simplicity, social media, Google, privacy, design research, the context in which design occurs, the Austin Center for Design, solving wicked problems, whether designers make good entrepreneurs, politics, Herb Simon & cybernetics, the strengths & weaknesses of interconnected systems, and how designers should position themselves.

Pointers to my talk videos, podcasts, and interviews.

Jeremy Anwyl,CEO of Edmunds.com, called me up to ask if I would like to be interviewed while reviewing the new SYNC control system for Ford Motor Company. summary: The modern car is far too complex, thus creating potential dangerous conditions. Instead of concentrating on the road, the driver controls the entertainment and comfort system: lots of controls, lots of menus, and screens that have to be watched to ensure the right item is selected.

My videos have been resurrected!  Let me explain.One upon a time, many years ago -- 1994 to be precise -- The Voyager Company produced a delightful CD-ROM that included copies of several of my books ("Design of Everyday Things," "Things that Make Us Smart," and "Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles."   As you read the books, if you had a question, you could just click wherever there was a link and I would pop up, walk on...

Want magazine inteviewed me in my Palo Alto, California home. The very nice interview that resulted was posted on May 14, 2010 at http://wantmag.com/release/001/2010/05/don-norman/

I'm giving the opening keynote address at  IIT's Institute of Design's Design Research Conference (Chicago, May 2010). The conference organizers interviewed me, which gave me a good chance to state my views on a number of contemporary issues in the design community.  I cover numerous topics, but include the one that is most controversial and is the theme of my keynote: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to...

Business Week has developed a list of what they call the World's  27 Most Influential Designers. I'm honored to be on the list, but I am also  skeptical. Among other things, I am a design thinker, not a designer. I study, analyze, teach, and preach good design. I have worked with some of the world's best designers (some of whom are on the Business Week list), and I have indeed worked on numerous products. But not as a designer.Still, as...

My MIT Sloan Management Review paper on waiting lines is finally out:Norman, D. A. (2009). Designing waits that work. MIT Sloan Management Review, 50(4), 23-28. The URL (above) only gives a short excerpt: you have to subscribe (or pay) to get the entire article. But if you write me, I'll send you a copy. Or you can simply look at the original version that spawned the paper: The Psychology of Waiting Lines. (The original is better in the amount of detail and...

DWELL Magazine asked me to judge bathroom faucets. I got to read the literature on them and examine each one (and read the literature), but they were all on a table in front of me, but free standing -- neither mounted nor connected to anything.  So I had to pretend to use each one. Not the best way to judge faucets.  In addition, the faucet you might want to select depends heavily upon the context - the design genre of...

Here is my talk on User Experience at the Adaptive Path conference on UX in 2008. http://vimeo.com/2963837...

TED is a fascinating conference. I've given two talks there over the years and serve on their advisory board. TED used to be a by-invitation conference only, but now it is open to anyone who can afford the rather outrageous registration fee.  Recently, TED has begun to make their talks available to anyone. I highly recommend exploring the site: there are some truly amazing, profound talks available: TED is at ted.com. My talk from 2003 is on "Design and Emotion"  (based...

Steven Levy lists The Design of Everyday Things as one of the "10 Great Tech Books" in the IEEE Spectrum., July 2008. I get two titles in his short review: "Design Guru" and "world-class crank." Hmm, I'll chose the world-class title. The world has too many gurus, not enough cranks....

Jane Black of the Washington Post did her homework well and wrote an engaging essay on new innovations in tableware. "A Knork in the road: On the cutting edge, new designs aim to change the way we eat, one bite at a time." Not only that, she let me have the last word.

Terry Winograd of Stanford's computer science department and d.school wrote a very nice description of our new Design + Operations MMM program at the Kellogg School of Business and Northwestern Engineering. That article is available in Interactions, the magazine for Human Computer Interaction professionals. Jimmy Guterman, editorial director of O'Reilly's Radar group gave the article and our program a nice description and plug in his blog, with his item entitled Teaching design to businesspeople. Guterman concludes by saying this about our...

Viele Leute brauchen gar keinen Computer. An interview with Felix Knoke of Spiegel On-Line is now available (in German). Dateien-Wirrwarr, verwirrende Menüs, viel zu viele Fenster: Computer-Visionär Don Norman findet die Programme von heute unmenschlich und überkompliziert. Mit SPIEGEL ONLINE sprach er über die Zukunft des Computers - und dessen nahes Ende....

With each new book comes a deluge of interviews, articles, reviews, and recordings. The latest book, The Design of Future Things, is no exception. Here are the ones I enjoyed the most, from a New York Times article (accompanied by 2 NY Times blogs) to an audio interview with CORE77.

Machines have neither motives nor emotions ... Still, machines, appliances and even services have personality traits, if only because they were designed to be conscientious or not, friendly or curt, smooth or abrupt, condescending or understanding, recalcitrant or forgiving.

In the Thursday, November 8 2007 edition of Time Magazine, Barbara Kiviat writes: Life is supposed to get easier with new technology. Donald Norman wishes it were really so. Instead, he says, as devices evolve, people wind up befuddled and annoyed. The culprit: bad design, a longtime target of the Northwestern University professor.

Tal Shay interviewed me for World usability Day; The interview is available both as a transcript and as an audio podcast...

Dan Turner has written a very informative article about Apple Computer's design process in Technology Review. He couldn’t get access to anyone now at Apple, so he interviewed a number of former Apple people. Yes, I'm in there as well. The article does an excellent job of showing that good process is useful, but a strong leader, with good taste , an excellent eye for detail, and the strength to lead a team to focused, cohesive design makes all the...

Ambidextrous magazine, Stanford University's Journal of Design, has printed an excerpt from the last chapter of my not-yet published book, The Design of Future Things: How to talk to people. Nice of them. The full chapter is Afterward: The Machine's Point of View, available here as a PDF. (The excerpt is part of an ancient manuscript I uncovered, written some time in the 21st century, trying to teach machines patience in their interactions with people). Let me also recommend their...

I'm pleased to announce the formation of the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern, where my co-director, Ed Colgate and I hope to create a new set of studies of engineering design: products, processes, and services. We have exciting plans for bringing together the resources of the Chicago area in design: architecture, products, graphics, education, and museums. We have two new graduate degree programs: one in Engineering Design and Innovation and the other, a joint MBA/Engineering degree, leading to an MBA...

Normally I don't comment upon on link to blogs that talk about me or my work, but this one was too much fun to ignore. One of my Nielsen Norman group clients is H& R Block. I recently helped them develop a new form of interaction for their income tax software, one that was so different than their standard approach that they decided to bring it out as its own separate brand: Tango. The Vice president who initiated the project...

Yet another title to add to my collection. I appeared on the American news show 60 Minutes where I was called the uber geek. Is that above or below a guru? An expert? An opinionated person?

A two-part podcast of my discussions with John Edson, President of Lunar Design, recorded at their Palo Alto, California design office....

Quotations from Ben Romano's article in the Seattle Times (Sep. 11, 2006) on computer hardware design. Apple Computer has shown that if you control the software and you control the hardware, you can make the two fit harmoniously into a beautiful, elegant package," said Don Norman, a former Apple executive who now consults with Microsoft and wrote the 2004 book "Emotional Design: Why We Love (or hate) Everyday Things." Design expert Norman considers the sleek, modern approach PC makers have...

I presented the Shocker lecture to the New Product Design and Business Development group at the University of Minnesota. They have made a video of that lecture available on their website.

I am honored to be the 2006 recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. Among the activities at the ceremonial week was a seminar and a very nice video that summarized my approach to design. These are now available on the Franklin Institute website. This note provides the URLs.

While I was in Philadelphia, I appeared on Marty Moss-Coane's National Public Radio interview show, Radio Times. We had a delightful one-hour broadcast, starting off with watches and ending up, well, all over. Moss-Coane does her homework, so she asked intelligent, probing questions. we both had a lot of fun. The interview is available for streaming, for downloading, and also as a podcast (in mp3 format). From the WHYY website: Smart Design: Wednesday, April 26, 2006, 10:35:48 AM The art...

Erin Massey of the Chicago Tribune newspaper (registration required) has written a nice article on the importance of product manuals. Although she interviewed me and included several quotations, she missed the most important lessons of all. So let me provide them here.

Bruce Nussbaum, of Business Week finally discovered my essay "Industrial Design: Claims without Substance,"  and discussed it in his blog on BusinessWeek.com, charmingly entitled "Don Norman is my hero." I had complained that Industrial Designers, clever folks that they are, often designed wonderful things, but then they made completely unsubstantiated claims about them. I took Bruce to task, for he has been the major champion design at Business Week, and it is he who is responsible for the annual IDSA/Business Week awards for design,...

December 5, 2005. Digital Living Room Summit, San Mateo, California. I'm was on the panel moderated by David Pogue of the New York Times, called “Plug and Pray,” about “the inability of different devices to connect shared content and often, simply work.” Within two hours, the first stories had hit the air. Amazing what the modern, fully wired, journalist can do. Red Herring said: “At one point, Mr. Norman, a skeptic who couldn’t name one recent product that he thought was...

In the November 1, 2005 issue of USA Today, Ed Baig has a nice story on the confusion and difficulty of using so many of our technological devices. When he interviewed me for the story, I told him that this difficulty has been around for a long time. The earliest documented period of confusion is for the plow. By the year 1532, the plow had so many adjustable parts that learning to use it was very difficult. And the manual...

The Student Chapter of HFES (Human Factors & Ergonomics Society) from the University of Central Florida are trying to raise money, so they have created a calendar for 2006. In their words: "This year our student chapter wanted to do something that would test our creativity, help us learn more about some of the major players in human factors, and allow us to do a fundraiser to provide the means for a student research award. What did we do? "We...

An interview with Christina Li, Founder and Editor in Chief of the Chinese wesbite group uiGarden ("Weaving usability and cultures"). English version Chinese version...

An interview with me is now available to my Chinese readers on Sina web. Alas, I can't tell you any more about it than that as it is in Chinese. The main page is http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/design_us/index.shtml, where I am in company with my friends David Kelley of IDEO and Patrick Whitney of Chicago's Institute of Design. The article about me is at http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2005-08-25/1013703319.shtml...

Don Fernandez of the San Diego Union wrote this entertaining — but very true — article about all those annoying beeps and blips our electronic equipment continually deliver to us. Annoying and confusing. Wayne Freedman of ABC Television, Channel 7, in San Francisco, did a lovely TV show on the topic of beeps, where I traced the origin to the whistling teapot, and showed how the mindless proliferation of devices that beep (stoves, timers, refrigerators, clocks, remote controls, ...) was...

Forbes.com is writing a 20-day series of articles on "the 20 tools which have had the biggest impact on human civilization." They asked me to be on their advisory board. "Writing," I proclaimed. "The invention of writing is probably the most important tool for human advancement, making it possible for each new generation to build upon the work of the previous, to transmit knowledge from person to person, across cultures and time." "Sorry," came back the response. "We decided early...

I am continualy amazed at the wide variety of places my work gets applied to. Here is a fascinating example from landscape design, taken from the "Daily on-line California," the on-line newspaper for the University of California, Berkeley. "Campus landscaping may be a major factor in a university's appeal, and UC Berkeley is one of the most landscape-conscious campuses in the country, according to Philip Waite, assistant professor of horticulture and landscape architecture at Washington State University ... According to...

Karina Meerman, one of the editors of the new Dutch magazine MacFreak interviewed me about my philosophy of design and my take on the "new" Apple Computer. Here is a pdf file of the interview....

An interview with Javier Cañada and Marco van Hout for the Dutch magazine Product. The magazine is in Dutch, but the interview, Q & A with Don Norman, is in English....

You might enjoy reading the these predictions about the future of electronic learning: in the ACM Magazine, eLearn. After this was published, I received email from a reader who stated that my prediction had already come true. He explained how he used his PDA to learn Chinese, with a phrase book, audio flash cards, and "a Read-Write chinese character tutorial that includes animated characters, stroke order practice, and multiple testing modes to test all aspects of developing chinese character knowledge,...

It's nice to be quoted, but not when the quote is out of context, or when I am described inaccurately. Strategiy.com has posted an opinion piece about Apple, in which I am quoted accurately, but out of context. Worse, I am described as "an employee of rival Microsoft." Not at all: I am an employee/owner of the Nielsen Norman group (NN/g) and a (half-time) Professor at Northwestern University. I have lots of clients at NN/g. One of them is indeed...

Years ago, I wrote a book of essays entitled "Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles." Didn't sell well, so now it is out of print. But, hey, some people remembered it: "In 1992, the usability guru Don Norman wrote that every child should receive a personal teddy that would store all the experiences people ever had." said the Sydney Morning Herald. (You can find "The Teddy" -- and other chapters from the book in the books section of...

Jeff Karoub of "smalltimes.com" interviewed me, among others, and put together this nice essay When technology is too good....

Avi Parush of Carelton University's (Canada) Human Oriented Technology Lab interviewed me about mental models. Here is the transcript....

Article from The Guardian (UK): "Former Apple fellow and design guru Don Norman has been influential on and offline. He tells Jack Schofield why products should now start making us smile. ..."...

Psychology Today Magazine. " 'An uncooperative PC violates our expectations,' says psychologist and computer scientist Donald Norman, author of Emotional Design....

(March 30, 2004): My 9 minutes of fame. Alas, TechTV is out of business, so my 9 minutes didn't last 9 months. But I did preserve the video as a low-quality, but large (3.5MBytes) file. Media Player video of my defence of putting emotions into machines (machine emotions, I hasten to add, not human ones). Plus miscellaneous asides that neither the interviewer nor I could resist. (Video is pointed to in box on lower right of page labelled "Video Highlight."...

(Feb. 12, 2004 (San Diego). 47 minutes of streaming audio (they didn't seem to have recorded the video)....

(January, 2004). "The book pops with fresh paradigms, applying scientific rigor to our romance with the inanimate. You'll never see housewares the same way again." Wired Magazine...

(February, 2004) "The major challenge ... Norman explains in this well-illustrated survey of the emotional drivers in product design, is that customers' responses vary so greatly. Product designers need to tailor their work carefully in order to push the right buttons with the right consumers." Harvard Business Review...

(January 2004) Interview with Cliff Atkinson. If you've been keeping up with PowerPoint criticism in the news lately, you'll be interested to hear what usability expert Don Norman says in his provocative interview. Don's comments broaden the public debate about PowerPoint by introducing the more relevant issues of cross-media design and audience usability. (April 2005: see my essay "In Defense of PowerPoint," in the "Essays" section of this website.)...

(January 5, 2004.) "Emotions run high for 'Knute Rockne of tech' " "He's a coach showing us new ways of playing the game. And Norman is changing the world of product design right here in Chicago without fanfare or celebrity." (Not the way I would have put it, but that's what the story says.)...

(January, 2004) Describes my work and "Emotional Design. The emphasis is skewed toward the last two chapters -- emotion in machines, and hence, the article is entitled "Why machines should fear."...

Article on the role of emotion in learning (the article is really about distance or electronic learning). In the ACM's eLearn journal....

Interview published 24 Oct. 2003 in L'Espresso (in Italian) with Arianna Dagnino, discussing my talk at the Institute for Interactive design, Ivrea and the (fascinating) research being done there. (Download PDF: Note: this is a 1.3 mbyte PDF file) (But while you are at it, you might enjoy browsing the Interactive design Institute's website.)...

Jo Twist's interview with me for BBC News. (And yes, she really did beam when I showed her my Namiki (Pilot) fountain pen.)...

Report on my September 2003 talk (the report is in Japanese)....

Katie Hafner decries the rise of everyday complexity in her New York Times article "There are times when I feel that I've worked the whole day and done no work," Dr. Norman said. "All I have done is maintained or fixed my computer equipment." Her article requires registration, and after a while, a fee. She interviewed me while I was writing the initial draft of my essay on the topic: The Complexity of Everyday Life...

interview "Designed for Life."...

On the value of Beauty, fun, and pleasure in design....

Ergonomics: A "cantankerous visionary" strives to put consumers first in a wireless world. May 24 2002. (The URL gets you to the home page: find the search box and search for "norman.")...

By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY, 2 Feb 2002 I'm an advisor to Evolution Robotics. (Be sure to watch the video on the USA Today site)...

By Alfred Hermida, BBC News Online, 15 Jan. 2002 BBC interviews me about the new iMac...

By Nicolas Mokhoff, EE Times, 29 Oct. 2001 EE Times article about my PopTech 2001 conference debate...

On NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow, 1 Feb 2002 Debate on Design with Michael Graves and Henry Petroski on the NPR Radio Show, "Science Friday" Link to streaming RealAudio...

elearningpost, 15 Feb 2002 Interview on learner-centered design and other relevant issues...

On PBS's Tech Nation with Dr. Moira Gunn, 10 July 2001 I spar with Jakob Nielsen on PBS's "Tech Nation." Link to streaming RealAudio...