Essays & Articles
Engineers and business executives are good at solving problems, but they seldom ask if it is the correct problem.
Human- and humanity-centered designers are trained to address the core, underlying factors, not just the symptoms.
Design must change from being unintentionally destructive to being intentionally constructive
From "Design for a Better World." last paragraph of Chapter 2 (page 13).
Failures? No — Learning Experiences
We scientists (and designers) learn from our failures. In fact, scientists seldom fail. Instead, they say “that didn’t work. Time to try something new.” I prefer never to talk of failure. Instead, I say “that...
Don Norman
Simplicity is in the mind, complexity is in the world.
If you understand something, then even things that are complex become simple. The complexity of the product must match the complexity of the task.
Don Norman in the book "Living with Complexity."
I learn more by being wrong than by being right
When people praise my ideas it is nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. If people disagree, I learn. If they convince me, I am thankful and I change. If I believe I was...
Don Norman
If you can think of a clever solution in a few hours, assume many others have already done so
If you can think of a clever new concept or solution to an existing problem in a few minutes or hours, then you should recognize that many people all over the world, many who have...
Don Norman
Make it Simple? No! Make it Understandable.
Make it Simple? No! Make it Understandable. When people make things "simple" by minimizing controls, they make it much more difficult to work or to understand.
Simplicity is in the mind, Complexity is in the world. Why? Things you understand are simple.
It is the designer’s job to take complex requirements and make them so understandable and appropriate that they are pronounced “simple.”
Don Norman
The universe is made of stories, not atoms
A quote from the poet Muriel Rukeyzer’s book “The speed of darkness.” Why stories? Because they combine history and context, critical events and results, both good and bad, expected and unexpected all linked through causal...
Don Norman
You are being too logical, I often tell engineers and executives.
“You are being too logical,” I explain. “People are not logical. Logic is artificial. It was invented by mathematicians and philosophers. It is not how people think, which is why it is so difficult for...
Design for people the way they are, not for how you want them to be.
Learning from the Success of Computer Games
EducationWe learn not by having our heads filled with the great thoughts and ideas of others, but by constructing them within our own conceptual structures. But this construction works best when the scenario is rigged so as to lead us to the ideas, to force us to confront them and understand them. This is...
November 17, 2008
3 minutes read
Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful
EssaysHuman-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. That’s a dangerous state — when things are treated as accepted wisdom. The purpose of this essay is to p...
November 17, 2008
17 minutes read
Emotionally-centered design
EssaysWeb 2.0 is coming. Rich Internet applications (RIA) are here. Hurrah! The internet has caught up with the desktop, at long last. As a result, they provide some natural experiments in emotionally-attractive websites, allowing us to contrast the more traditional, static html page website with these...
November 17, 2008
6 minutes read
The Post Disciplinary Revolution: Industrial Design and Human Factors? Heal Yourselves
DesignOutline of an invited keynote address at the 1998 annual meeting of the Human Factors society. They hated it....
November 17, 2008
2 minutes read
Engineers and business executives are good at solving problems, but they seldom ask if it is the correct problem.
Human- and humanity-centered designers are trained to address the core, underlying factors, not just the symptoms.
Design must change from being unintentionally destructive to being intentionally constructive
From "Design for a Better World." last paragraph of Chapter 2 (page 13).
Failures? No — Learning Experiences
We scientists (and designers) learn from our failures. In fact, scientists seldom fail. Instead, they say “that didn’t work. Time to try something new.” I prefer never to talk of failure. Instead, I say “that...
Don Norman
Simplicity is in the mind, complexity is in the world.
If you understand something, then even things that are complex become simple. The complexity of the product must match the complexity of the task.
Don Norman in the book "Living with Complexity."
I learn more by being wrong than by being right
When people praise my ideas it is nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. If people disagree, I learn. If they convince me, I am thankful and I change. If I believe I was...
Don Norman
If you can think of a clever solution in a few hours, assume many others have already done so
If you can think of a clever new concept or solution to an existing problem in a few minutes or hours, then you should recognize that many people all over the world, many who have...
Don Norman
Make it Simple? No! Make it Understandable.
Make it Simple? No! Make it Understandable. When people make things "simple" by minimizing controls, they make it much more difficult to work or to understand.
Simplicity is in the mind, Complexity is in the world. Why? Things you understand are simple.
It is the designer’s job to take complex requirements and make them so understandable and appropriate that they are pronounced “simple.”
Don Norman
The universe is made of stories, not atoms
A quote from the poet Muriel Rukeyzer’s book “The speed of darkness.” Why stories? Because they combine history and context, critical events and results, both good and bad, expected and unexpected all linked through causal...
Don Norman
You are being too logical, I often tell engineers and executives.
“You are being too logical,” I explain. “People are not logical. Logic is artificial. It was invented by mathematicians and philosophers. It is not how people think, which is why it is so difficult for...
Design for people the way they are, not for how you want them to be.
Full-scale maps: Cartography dream realized
EssaysCambridge, UK. 1 April 2006. An old dream of cartographers has finally been realized through flat-panel displays and small, portable computational devices. For centuries, cartographers have dreamed of full-scale maps, that is, a map with a scale of 1:1, so that 1 Km. of the map would represent 1 ...
November 17, 2008
3 minutes read
Emotional Autos
AutomobilesDONALD A. NORMAN Originally published in InteriorMotives. You are driving along, about to change lanes, when your car suddenly tenses up. The seatbelts tighten. The seat straightens up, the headrest moves forward. As you turn...
November 17, 2008
3 minutes read
How Might People Interact with Agents
EssaysPublished as: Norman, D. A. (1997). How might people interact with agents. In J. Bradshaw (Ed.), Software agents
November 17, 2008
13 minutes read
Toilet Paper Algorithms: I didn’t know you had to be a computer scientist to use toilet paper.
EssaysApril 2002: modified in June and August, 2002. ? When we remodeled our house, we put in dual-paper toilet roll holders so that we would always have a new roll when the old one ran out. Oops, they both ran out together. We discovered the algorithms of toilet paper use....
November 17, 2008
7 minutes read
Problem of Automation: Inappropriate feedback and interaction, not over-automation
EssaysAs automation increasingly takes its place in industry it is often blamed for causing harm and increasing the chance of human error when failures occur. I propose that the problem is not the presence of automation, but rather its inappropriate design. The problem is that the operations under norm...
November 17, 2008
2 minutes read
Usability Is Not a Luxury
DesignIf the customer can't find it, then the customer can't buy it. This simple statement explains why usability is the lifeline of e-commerce....
November 17, 2008
16 minutes read
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