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About Donald A. Norman
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Blog postOn September 15, 2022 I was honored to be the first recipient of the Frontier Design Innovation award by the 2022 World Capital of Design Conference under the guidance of the Shanghai Municipal Government and an international jury of notable designers from all over the world. The newspaper report – and my four minute video talk is below (presented by ZOOM).
The talk also discusses the motivation for my new book, Design for a Better World: Understandable, Sustainable, Humanity Centered -
Blog postThe Service Design Network has put together a small panel (6 people) of designers--two from Ukraine--to talk about the design community's solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to raise money for World Central Kitchen, a charity that delivers vital relief. See https://events.humanitix.com/takingastandforukraine)
I am one of the six people: my talk is below (updated May 6, 2022 to reflect the changes I made when I gave the talk).
Design for a Better World: Taking a St -
Blog postThis excerpt is from Chapter 22 of my new book:
Design for a Better World: How to create a meaningful, sustainable, and humanity-centered future. MIT Press (expected publication, early 2023).Chapter 22 Moving from Humans to Humanity Why the name Humanity-Centered Design? How is it different from Human-Centered? Don’t the terms “human” and “humanity” mean very similar thing?
The meaning of the phrases cannot be inferred simply by the words: it is necessary to view the context: His -
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Blog postDesign for a Better World: How to Create a Meaningful, Sustainable, and Humanity-Centered Future[1]
Human behavior brought our world to the brink, human behavior can save us.
The world is a mess. Our dire predicament, from collapsing social structures to the climate crisis, has been millennia in the making and can be traced back to the erroneous belief that the earth's resources are infinite. The key to change, says Don Norman, is human behavior, covered in the book's three majo -
Blog postThese are the opening pages of my new book:
Design for a Better World: How to create a meaningful, sustainable, and humanity-centered future. MIT Press (expected publication, early 2023).Almost Everything I see Is Artificial, and Almost Everything Artificial has Been DesignedFigure 1. The view from my window: Everything is there by design (photo by the author) Figure 1. The view from my window: Everything is there by design (photo by the author)
As I sit down to write, I peer to -
Blog postDesign for India Design is a powerful force that shapes culture and it is a professional activity that is beneficial for both community and business alike. This blog is for all those who are interested in exploring these wider manifestations of design as a critical human activity and would like to shape its application across all human cultural and economic activities. The header to M. P. Ranjan’s blog “Design for India.” The last entry is June 2015. Ranjan died in Augus
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Blog postIt all started in LinkedIn. Scott Klemmer and I wrote a paper called "State of Design: How Design Education Must Change" published in March 2014:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140325102438-12181762-state-of-design-how-design-education-must-change/
We argued that design education must change but we didn’t say how. Today, 6 years later, we are ready to embark upon that journey.
Recently I was asked to contribute to a special issue of the new design journal, She -
Blog postI'm starting to develop short videos on a variety of subjects, doing them in conjunction with the various organizations I am associated with. This one is done with the Nielsen Norman Group and the UC San Diego Design Lab. Another title for this short video might be, "Why design education must change." And if you like this video, read the paper: Meyer, M., & Norman, D. (2020, March). Changing design education for the 21st century. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Econom
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Blog postA 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 explanations. Stories emphasize that life is an interconnected system.
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Blog postRecycling bins at the UC San Diego Student Center, 2020. (Photo by author) This is a two-part essay, published on different days in the magazine, Fast Company. (Note that the Fast Company editor creates the title.)
Part 1: I’m an expert on complex design systems. Even I can’t figure out recycling
Part 2: Waste is an enormous problem. But recycling is the wrong solution
The two links above get you to the two parts at Fast Company. Here is my draft.
Part 1: Why Rec -
Blog post(Updated April 2, 2020) Michael Meyer and I have written a guide for changing how designers are educated, published in a special issue of the Journal She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, devoted to Design Education, edited by Guillermina Noël (Ken Friedman is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal). Together with our friends at IBM Design, we intend to implement the strategy outlined in the paper. We have recruited 10 senior designers to help us get started, people who repre
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Blog postMy essay in Fast Company, to which their editors gave the title:
This Is the One Skill Designers Need to Develop Most in 2020. Legendary designer Don Norman takes designers to task for elevating craft above all else, when what matters most is the willingness to collaborate.
On what it takes to succeed in a company – a willingness to collaborate. To recognize that engineers, marketing, sales, manufacturing, and business executives all play essential roles. Each has a valid pers -
Blog postPublished in: Norman, D. (2018). People-centered (not tech-driven) design. In T. Pappas (Ed.), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Anniversary Edition (pp. 640-641). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
How did we reach the point where our technology is more important than people? And most importantly, how can we reverse this trend in order to ensure that our technologies are designed with people in mind, more humane, more collaborative, and more beneficial to the needs of people, societies, and -
Blog postHuman-centered design has four major principles, summarized below and then expanded upon:
Ensuring that we solve the core, root issues, not just the problem as presented to us (which is often the symptom, not the cause)Focusing on peopleTaking a systems point of view, realizing that most complications result from the interdependencies of the multiple partsContinually testing and refining our proposals, ensuring they truly meet the needs of the people for whom they are intendedThe Four Prin -
Blog postVerganti, R., & Norman, D. (2019, July 16, 2019). Why criticism is good for creativity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/07/why-criticism-is-good-for-creativity (May require registration or payment.) One of the most popular mantras for innovation is “avoid criticism.” The underlying assumption is that criticism kills the flow of creativity and the enthusiasm of a team. Aversion to criticism has significantly spread in the last 20 years, especially through the advocates
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