Donald A. Norman Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 84 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Donald A. Norman.
Famous Quotes By Donald A. Norman
Finally, people have to actually purchase it. It doesn't matter how good a product is if, in the end, nobody uses it. — Donald A. Norman
Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made. — Donald A. Norman
We are victims of our own success. We have let technology lead the way, pushing ever faster to newer, faster, and more powerful systems, with nary a moment to rest, contemplate, and to reflect upon why, how, and for whom all this energy has been expended. — Donald A. Norman
When things go right, people credit their own abilities and intelligence. The onlookers do the reverse. When they see things go well for someone else, they sometimes credit the environment, or luck. — Donald A. Norman
To understand products, it is not enough to understand design or technology: it is critical to understand business. — Donald A. Norman
We delude ourselves if we believe that skilled behavior is easy, that it can come about without effort. We forget the years of tuning, of learning and practice it takes to be skilled at even the most fundamental of human activities: eating, walking, talking, reading, and writing. It is tempting to want instant gratification - immediate expert performance and experiential pleasure - but the truth is that this primarily occurs only after considerable amounts of accretion and tuning. — Donald A. Norman
If you think of the product as a service, then the separate parts make no sense - the point of a product is to offer great experiences to its owner, which means that it offers a service. And that experience, that service, comprises the totality of its parts: The whole is indeed made up of all of the parts. The real value of a product consists of far more than the product's components. — Donald A. Norman
Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating. — Donald A. Norman
What makes something simple or complex? It's not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has: It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates. — Donald A. Norman
Any time you see signs or labels added to a device, it is an indication of bad design: a simple lock should not require instructions. — Donald A. Norman
It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people's lives. — Donald A. Norman
In their work, designers often become expert with the device they are designing. Users are often expert at the task they are trying to perform with the device. [ ... ] Professional designers are usually aware of the pitfalls. But most design is not done by professional designers, it is done by engineers, programmers, and managers. — Donald A. Norman
Cognition and emotion are tightly intertwined, which means that the designers must design with both in mind. — Donald A. Norman
In the university, professors make up artificial problems. In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered. — Donald A. Norman
A story tells of Henry Ford's buying scrapped Ford cars and having his engineers disassemble them to see which parts failed and which were still in good shape. Engineers assumed this was done to find the weak parts and make them stronger. Nope. Ford explained that he wanted to find the parts that were still in good shape. The company could save money if they redesigned these parts to fail at the same time as the others. — Donald A. Norman
It is easy to design devices that work well when everything goes as planned. The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned. — Donald A. Norman
No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service - from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly. That's systems thinking. — Donald A. Norman
The designer has an obligation to provide an appropriate conceptual model for the way that the device works. It doesn't have to completely accurate but it has to be sufficiently accurate that it will help in both the learning of the operation and also dealing with novel situations. — Donald A. Norman
Products were once designed for the functions they performed. But when all companies can make products that perform their functions equally well, the distinctive advantage goes to those who provide pleasure and enjoyment while maintaining the power. If functions are equated with cognition, pleasure is equated with emotion; today we want products that appeal to both cognition and emotion. — Donald A. Norman
Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction. — Donald A. Norman
Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right. — Donald A. Norman
original ideas are the easy part. Actually producing the idea as a successful product is what is hard. — Donald A. Norman
Only the most sophisticated of beings can lie and cheat, and get away with it. — Donald A. Norman
Most expert, skilled behavior works this way, whether it is playing tennis or a musical instrument, or doing mathematics and science. Experts minimize the need for conscious reasoning. Philosopher — Donald A. Norman
Technology usually provides a series of tradeoffs. Each asset is offset by a deficit ... A major problem occurs when those who suffer from technology's defecits and those who benefit are not the same people. — Donald A. Norman
When I use a direct manipulation system whether for text editing, drawing pictures, or creating and playing games I do think of myself not as using a computer but as doing the particular task. The computer is, in effect, invisible. The point cannot be overstressed: make the computer system invisible. — Donald A. Norman
Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule — Donald A. Norman
The argument is not between adding features and simplicity, between adding capability and usability. The real issue is about design: designing things that have the power required for the job while maintaining understandabili ty, the feeling of control, and the pleasure of accomplishment. — Donald A. Norman
The current paradigm is so thoroughly established that the only way to change is to start over again. — Donald A. Norman
If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough - they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things. — Donald A. Norman
The best kind of design isn't necessarily an object, a space, or a structure: it's a process- dynamic and adaptable. — Donald A. Norman
When a device as simple as a door has to come with an instruction manual - even a one-word manual - then it is a failure, poorly designed. — Donald A. Norman
It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines. — Donald A. Norman
The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be. — Donald A. Norman
The major problems facing the development of products that are safer, less prone to error, and easier to use and understand are not technological: they are social and organizational. — Donald A. Norman
Principles of design:
1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible: bridge gulfs between Execution and Evaluation.
4. Get the mappings right.
5. Exploit the power of constraints.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize. — Donald A. Norman
Once people find an explanation for an apparent anomaly, they tend to believe they can now discount it. But explanations are based on analogy with past experiences, experiences that may not apply to the current situation. In the driving story, the prevalence of billboards for Las Vegas was a signal we should have heeded, but it seemed easily explained. Our experience is typical: some major industrial incidents have resulted from false explanations of anomalous events. But do note: usually these apparent anomalies should be ignored. Most of the time, the explanation for their presence is correct. Distinguishing a true anomaly from an apparent one is difficult. — Donald A. Norman
A good designer will actually design the company. — Donald A. Norman
Could we ever switch to this or any of the many other rational systems? Unlikely: tradition is difficult to overcome. — Donald A. Norman
Standardization is indeed the fundamental principle of desperation: when no other solution appears possible, simply design everything the same way, so people only have to learn once. If — Donald A. Norman
How do you discover a need that nobody yet knows about? This is where the product breakthroughs come through. — Donald A. Norman
Change the attitude toward errors. Think of an object's user as attempting to do a task, getting there by imperfect approximations. Don't think of the user as making errors; think of the actions as approximations of what is desired. — Donald A. Norman
It was always amusing to be inside Apple and read what journalists said we were doing — Donald A. Norman
In design it is important to shoe the effect of an action ... Feedback is critical. — Donald A. Norman
Attractive things work better. — Donald A. Norman
I think a successful company is one where everybody owns the same mission. Out of necessity, we divide ourselves up into discipline groups. But the goal when you are actually doing the work is to somehow forget what discipline group you are in and come together. So in that sense, nobody should own user experience; everybody should own it. — Donald A. Norman
In the consumer economy taste is not the criterion in the marketing of expensive soft drinks, usability is not the primary criterion in the marketing of home and office appliances. We are surrounded with objects of desire, not objects of use. — Donald A. Norman
If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual. — Donald A. Norman
Even systems that do not use menus need to provide some structure: appropriate constraints and forcing functions, natural good mapping, and all the tools of feedforward and feedback. The most effective way of helping people remember is to make it unnecessary. — Donald A. Norman
Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion. — Donald A. Norman
Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions. Bad websites have horrible personalities and instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly. We need to design things-products, websites, services-to convey whatever personality and emotions are desired. — Donald A. Norman
The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things. — Donald A. Norman
I'm not a fan of technology . I'm a fan of pedagogy, of understanding how people learn and the most effective learning methods. But technology enables some exciting changes. — Donald A. Norman
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, — Donald A. Norman
Go to the bookstore and look at how many bookshelves are filled with books trying to explain how to work the devices. We don't see shelves of books on how to use television sets, telephones, refrigerators or washing machines. Why should we for computer-based applications? — Donald A. Norman
Technology may change rapidly, but people change slowly. The principals [of design] come from understanding of people. They remain true forever. — Donald A. Norman
As the technology matures, it becomes less and less relevant. The technology is taken for granted. Now, new customers enter the marketplace, customers who are not captivated by technology, but who instead want reliability, convenience, no fuss or bother, and low cost. — Donald A. Norman
Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence. — Donald A. Norman
The world is complex, and so too must be the activities that we perform. But that doesn't mean that we must live in continual frustration. No. The whole point of human-centered design is to tame complexity, to turn what would appear to be a complicated tool into one that fits the task, that is understandable, usable, enjoyable. — Donald A. Norman
One way of overcoming the fear of the new is to make it look like the old. — Donald A. Norman
Simplicity design axiom: The complexity of the information appliance is that of the task, not the tool. The technology is invisible. — Donald A. Norman
Simplification is as much in the mind as it is in the device. — Donald A. Norman
Fail often, fail fast, — Donald A. Norman
Too many companies believe that all they must do is provide a 'neat' technology or some 'cool' product or, sometimes, just good, solid engineering. Nope. All of those are desirable (and solid engineering is a must), but there is much more to a successful product than that: understanding how the product is to be used, design, engineering, positioning, marketing, branding-all matter. It requires designing the Total User Experience. — Donald A. Norman
User experience is really the whole totality. Opening the package good example. It's the total experience that matters. And that starts from when you first hear about a product experience is more based upon memory than reality. If your memory of the product is wonderful, you will excuse all sorts of incidental things. — Donald A. Norman
Creeping featurism is a disease, fatal if not treated promptly. There are some cures, but, as usual, the best approach is to practice preventative medicine. — Donald A. Norman
A challenge to the designers of the world: Make signs unnecessary. — Donald A. Norman
Complexity is acceptable as long as it is intelligible and necessary. We want to avoid needless complications. — Donald A. Norman
Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself. — Donald A. Norman
The vicious cycle starts: if you fail at something, you think it is your fault. Therefore you think you can't do that task. As a result, next time you have to do the task, you believe you can't, so you don't even try. The result is that you can't, just as you thought. — Donald A. Norman
The designer shouldn't think of a simple dichotomy between errors and correct behavior; rather, the entire interaction should be treated as a cooperative endeavor between person and machine, one in which misconceptions can arise on either side. — Donald A. Norman
A usable design starts with careful observations of how the tasks being supported are actually performed, followed by a design process that results in a good fit to the actual ways the tasks get performed. The technical name for this method is task analysis. The name for the entire process is human-centered design (HCD), discussed — Donald A. Norman
Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. — Donald A. Norman
Behavioral design is all about feeling in control. Includes: usability, understanding, but also the feel. — Donald A. Norman
If you're more susceptible to interruption, you do more out of the box thinking. — Donald A. Norman
People Propose, Science Studies, Technology Conforms. — Donald A. Norman
A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem. — Donald A. Norman
Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [ ... ] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is. — Donald A. Norman
When you have trouble with things - whether it's figuring out whether to push or pull a door or the arbitrary vagaries of the modern computer and electronics industries - it's not your fault. Don't blame yourself: blame the designer. — Donald A. Norman
Attractive things work better When you wash and wax a car, it drives better, doesn't it? Or at least feels like it does. — Donald A. Norman
Having the best product means nothing if the people won't buy it. — Donald A. Norman
Serious accidents are frequently blamed on "human error." Yet careful analysis of such situations shows that the design or installation of the equipment has contributed significantly to the problems. The design team or installers did not pay sufficient attention to the needs of those who would be using the equipment, so confusion or error was almost unavoidable. — Donald A. Norman