Donald A. Norman's Blog, page 3

Simplicity: A Matter of Design by Per Mollerup

Mollerup, P. (2015). Simplicity: A matter of design. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: BIS Publishers.I sat down in the living room. I read, turned the pages, read, skimmed, and read again. A long period passed.Then I stood up and announced to the room, "this is a brilliant book!"What more need I say?I loved everything about it: the cover, the typesetting, the book design, the illustrations, and most of all, the commentary. I loved the analysis of the levels of simplicity and...

In memory of Naomi Miyake

Naomi Miyake, a brilliant Japanese researcher, a close friend and colleague, and one of my early PhD students, died this year (2015).

Here are my reflections on her carer, published in the japanese Cognitive Science Society's journal: Cognitive Studies, 22(4), 1-38. (Dec. 2015)

How Apple is Giving Design a Bad Name

Bruce Tognazzini and I document the many shortcomings of Apple's current design philosophy in this Fast Company article.

Security and usablity go hand in hand

Robert Lemos from TechBeacon has written an excellent article on the tradeoff between security and usability: Security and usability go hand in hand: 5 tips to get the development mix right.


I'm obviously biased because he spent a lot of time discussing the issues with me (and used many of my comments in the article), but he also interviewed excellent developers who extended my comments and discussed the implementation issues in more detail.

The "science" in the science of design

Design is a complex field. Some components of design already are based upon good science, usually from the behavioral and cognitive sciences. Some are at the pre-scientific level of understanding. I believe that with a proper attitude toward evidence-based studies, these areas can also become either scientific, or at least rigorously proven to be effective when used under well-understood circumstances. Some aspects of design seem primarily based upon human creativity, sense of style, and other socially mediated conventions. These may never be scientific, but they do play a critically important role in the quality and acceptance of design. So, can design be a science? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Can it be empirically based, evidence driven? Yes. Will it have to reply on intuition and the creativity of individual designers? Sometimes, yes. Design is a multi-faceted, complex enterprise. It involves the initial choice of what to make, a deep understanding of people, of materials, and of technology. It requires understanding how people decide upon purchase, and then use products. It covers an extremely wide range of activities and different disciplines of study and training. It is this depth and richness that makes design such a wonderful, fascinating field.

Affordances: Commentary on the Special Issue of AI EDAM

The Journal "Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing" published a special issue on Affordances and asked me to comment on the collection. The concept of affordances has an interesting history, starting with the keen observations and thoughts of the perceptual psychologist, J.J. Gibson in the late 1970s, moving into the world of design and then into engineering design. As a result of this disciplinary migration, the concept of affordance leads several rather separate lives within these different fields -- ecological psychology, Design, and engineering design -- with each field barely aware of the work being done in the others. All communities make valuable contributions from their perspective of the issue. I continue to look forward to a merging of disciplines, where the insights of all fields can be brought together to form a new, harmonious whole, with many new and exciting emergent properties.

Encounters with HCI pioneers

From the very beginnings of time, Ben Shneiderman has been busy photographing all that he sees. Ben was active in the pre-history days of the folks who tried to understand the newly-developed computing machines, especially as they moved into people's homes, offices, and schools. Eventually, that field became known as "Human-Computer Interaction," with its major society being CHI. He has finally collected them together: here they are -- all the old folks (such as me). Such old folks portrayed by photos from their youth, so I can barely recognize some of them: I can barely recognize me.

Ready or not, the fully autonomous car is coming

My Op-Ed piece for the San Diego Union-Tribune for September 26, 2015.
...
Ready for cars with computers as driver? No? Good, because the computers aren't ready either. But have no doubt, they are coming.
...
The tremendous saving of lives and injuries is strong support for the development of autonomous vehicles. However, the relentless automation of all that can be automated is not a good thing for society.

Apple's products are getting harder to use because they ignore principles of design.

I was once proud to be at Apple, proud of Apple's reputation of advancing ease of use and understanding. Alas, these attributes are fast disappearing from their products in favor of pretty looks, or as designers call it "styling." A journalist has just reported my views. And Bruce Tognazzini and I are writing a detailed critique. This note gives highlights of the views and points to her interview with me..

A Product Is More than a Product -- Consider the Chair

Imagine how the 21st century chair might perk up when guests arrive, autonomously transforming itself as needed. It can become a stepstool when someone needs to stand on it, or a bed, perhaps formed by enlisting other chairs so that they can to support a horizontal body or two or three. When self-organized into neat orderly rows of its collaborators, the chair can accommodate crowds. While awaiting the crowd's arrival the chairs are a memory of the future, reminding us of the event that is to come. After they leave, the same chairs serve as a memory of the past. These 21st century chairs are social, aiming to please. They will be active servants, relationship builders, and enablers of social interactions. In the 21st century designers will produce many things besides chairs, many of which will not be objects. Some will be services and experiences, such as healthcare and wellness. Some will be ideas. Is an idea a thing, a product, a service? Whatever they are called, they need to be designed not as isolated things but as complex, interrelated systems, as total experiences. As relationships.