Donald A. Norman's Blog, page 7

State of Design: How Design Education Must Change

For design to succeed, grow, achieve its potential, and train future leaders, we envision a new curriculum. In our vision, these new programs combine learning the art and craft of beautiful, pleasurable well-crafted design with substantive courses in the social and biological sciences, in technology, mathematics and statistics, and in the understanding of experimental methods and rigorous reasoning. Programming and mechatronics are essential skills in today's product world. Not only will this training make for better practitioners, but it will also equip future generations of designers to be better at developing the hard, rigorous theory design requires.

Design is an exciting powerful field, filled with promise. To meet the challenges of the 21st century, design and design education must change. So too must universities.

Gestural Control: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I await the day when gestures become standardized. When systems combine the best of all worlds: gestures, both in the air and on surfaces, voice commands where appropriate, and menus, keyboards, and pointing devices where appropriate. The most powerful systems will give us the choice to use whatever is best suited for the job. But before we can do this, we have a simple task to do: reform the patent system.

Stupid Smart Stuff: Watches and Automation

Whenever you see something labeled "smart" or "intelligent," be assured that it is actually rather stupid. It is time to for the designers and engineers of this coming automated world and take heed from the lessons learned over the years in the field of Human-Systems Integration, in studies of automation. Lots of excellent scientists working in the research labs of automobile companies know all this. Product people are notorious about ignoring the wisdom of research groups in their same company. We now have very smart devices, stupidly done. I fear the consequences will be a lot worse than waking people up at 4:30 in the morning. Pay attention, engineers: pay attention, designers. Pay attention or people will be killed.

Nutrition, Nudges, and Sledge Hammers

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed changing the labels now required on all foodstuff. The goal is to nudge people to better eating. The good part is that, the FDA has clearly thought about the legibility and clarity of nutritional guidelines. Not only did they decide to make the calorie count more visible, but they made the percentage values more prominent, they reconsidered what information was to be listed, and perhaps most important of all, they changed the definition of "a serving" to what people really eat. What is next? ... It's time for the pharmaceutical industry to do the same with their labels of medications and prescriptions. It's a systems problem. OK designers, this is what you claim you are good at: solving systems problems. Get to work: you could save lives.

Why Rice Cookers Are Exciting

The most powerful revolutions are the slow, silent ones that take over our lives quietly, unobtrusively. No media attention, no over-hyped excitement. But one day you look up and, oops, what has happened? Consider the everyday rice cooker. It seems rather dull: a squat box occupying space on the countertop, usually without any grace or sense of style. Yet this unimpressive appearing cooking device now simplifies the lives of tens of millions of owners all over the world. Excerpts from my first "influencer" post on LinkedIn

Stop Cellphone Anorexia: Make Batteries Last the Day. A Rant.

How can we get the batteries on our smart phones to last the entire day? Make them bigger. Eliminate phone anorexia. The evil is the cult of thinness. Phone Anorexia. Want to make batteries last beyond the day? Make them bigger. it is that simple. Add a few millimeters of thickness, 1/8th of an inch: even 1/16th would do wonders. That's all it would take.

Floorplan Light Switches

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I got tired of light switches that contained a long, one-dimensional linear array of switches mounted on a vertical wall controlling a two-dimensional placement of lights that were placed on a horizontal plane. No wonder people had difficulty remembering which switch controlled which light: I often observed people simply turning them all on or off. Why not arrange the switches in the same spatial configuration as the lights, and then mount the switches on the same spatial plane as the lights. Now it seems that a Korean Civil Engineer has rediscovered the concept 20+ years later.

The cult of the peacock (Brendan Vance)

Brendan Vance, a game developer and blogger, has written a very nice critique of modern games that he calls "The cult of the peacock." But I do disagree with his complaint about the lack of manuals. Few people ever read manuals -- as is well illustrated in Vance's discussion about them. This is true whether it is a manual for an automobile, a new cooking device a TV set, a computer program or app, or a game. therefore, to me, the important point is to develop devices that are self-explaining, that do not require manuals. In the new edition of Design of Everyday Things I call this property "discoverable." I believe it is possible to design game controls and other features in ways that do not require manuals, especially for experienced game players. Attract screens (remember them?) can serve as tutorials without feeling like one. Similarly, there can be other features whose purpose is to demonstrate and teach but that are so cleverly done that they are not perceived as such.

UX Magazine Interview: Solving the Right Problem and Finding Your Own Solution

An interview with Luke Swenson for UX Magazine. "One of the important skills a good designer brings to the table is figuring out what the real problem is. Most designers fall prey to this. The client says what they want, what they want to achieve, and then the designer comes up with a solution, but they never really ask whether or not that's the actual underlying problem. If you dig a little deeper for the fundamental problem, your research can lead to...

Cool Tools (Kevin Kelly)

Cool Tools is a cool book. I've wasted, um, enjoyed, many an hour with it. It is a delight to pick up at random times in the day and to randomly open it up and start reading. As Kevin Kelly says: all these items are listed not because you should buy any of them, but because you might enjoy knowing that they exist. And I do.