Don Norman | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Norman in 2011 | |
| Born | Donald Arthur Norman (1935-12-25)December 25, 1935 (age 89) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | MIT University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | The Design of Everyday Things Cognitive ergonomics User-centered design |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cognitive science Usability engineering |
| Institutions | Northwestern University University of California, San Diego Nielsen Norman Group Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology |
| Thesis | Sensory Thresholds And Response Biases In Detection Experiments, A Theoretical And Experimental Analysis (1962) |
| Doctoral advisor | R. Duncan Luce |
| Doctoral students | |
| Website | jnd |
Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935)[2][3] is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab atUniversity of California, San Diego.[4] He is best known for his books on design, especiallyThe Design of Everyday Things. He is widely regarded for his expertise in the fields ofdesign,usability engineering, andcognitive science,[4] and has shaped the development of the field ofcognitive systems engineering.[5] He is a co-founder of theNielsen Norman Group, along withJakob Nielsen. He is also anIDEO fellow and a member of the Board of Trustees ofIIT Institute of Design in Chicago. He also holds the title ofProfessor Emeritus of Cognitive Science at theUniversity of California, San Diego. Norman is an activeDistinguished Visiting Professor at theKorea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where he spends two months a year teaching.[when?]
Much of Norman's work involves the advocacy ofuser-centered design.[6] His books all have the underlying purpose of furthering the field of design, from doors to computers. Norman has taken a controversial stance in saying that thedesign research community has had little impact in the innovation of products, and that while academics can help in refining existing products, it is technologists that accomplish the breakthroughs.[7] To this end, Norman named his website with the initialismJND (just-noticeable difference) to signify his endeavors to make a difference.[1]
In 1957, Norman received aB.S. degree inelectrical engineering fromMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[8] Norman received anM.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.[9] He received aPhD inpsychology from theUniversity of Pennsylvania.[9] He was one of the earliest graduates from theMathematical Psychology group at University of Pennsylvania and his advisor wasDuncan Luce.[9]
After graduating, Norman took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Studies atHarvard University[10][11] and within a year became a lecturer.
After four years with the Center, Norman took a position as an associate professor in the Psychology Department atUniversity of California, San Diego (UCSD). Norman applied his training as an engineer and computer scientist, and as an experimental and mathematical psychologist, to the emerging discipline ofcognitive science. Norman eventually became founding chair of the Department of Cognitive Science and chair of the Department of Psychology.
At UCSD, Norman was a founder of the Institute for Cognitive Science and one of the organizers of theCognitive Science Society (along withRoger Schank,Allan Collins, and others), which held its first meeting at the UCSD campus in 1979.[12][non-primary source needed]
Together with psychologistTim Shallice, Norman proposed a framework of attentional control of executive functioning.[when?] One of the components of the Norman-Shallice model is thesupervisory attentional system.[13]
Norman made the transition from cognitive science tocognitive engineering by entering the field as a consultant and writer. His article "The truth about Unix:The user interface is horrid"[14] inDatamation (1981) catapulted him to a position of prominence in the computer world.[citation needed] Soon after, his career took off outside of academia, although he still remained active at UCSD until 1993. Norman continued his work to furtherhuman-centered design by serving on numerous university and government advisory boards such as theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He currently[when?] serves on numerous committees and advisory boards like at Motorola, theToyota National College of Technology,TED Conference,Panasonic,Encyclopædia Britannica and many more.
Norman was also part of a select team flown in to investigate the 1979Three Mile Island nuclear accident.[15]
In 1993, Norman left UCSD to joinApple Computer, initially as an Apple Fellow as a User Experience Architect (the first use of the phrase "User Experience" in a job title[16][17][citation needed]), and then as the Vice President of theAdvanced Technology Group. He later worked forHewlett-Packard before joining withJakob Nielsen to form theNielsen Norman Group in 1998. He returned to academia as a professor ofcomputer science atNorthwestern University, where he was co-director of theSegal Design Institute until 2010. In 2014, he returned to UCSD to become director of the newly established The Design Lab housed at theCalifornia Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.[18]
Norman has received many awards for his work. He received twohonorary degrees, one "S. V. della laurea ad honorem" in Psychology from theUniversity of Padua in 1995 and one doctorate in Industrial Design and Engineering fromDelft University of Technology.[19][9] In 2001, he was inducted as aFellow of theAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM) and won the Rigo Award fromSIGDOC, the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on the Design of Communication (DOC).[20] In 2006, he received theBenjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.[8] In 2009, Norman was elected an Honorary Fellow of theDesign Research Society. In 2011 Norman was elected a member of theNational Academy of Engineering for the development of design principles based on human cognition that enhance the interaction between people and technology.[citation needed]
Norman, alongside colleagueJakob Nielsen, formed the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) in 1998.[21] The company's vision is to help designers and other companies move toward more human-centered products and internet interactions, and are pioneers in the field ofuser experience design.[21]
In 1986, Norman introduced the term "user-centered design" in the bookUser Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-computer Interaction[22], a book edited by him and by Stephen W. Draper. In the introduction of the book, the idea that designers should aim their efforts at the people who will use the system is introduced:
People are so adaptable that they are capable of shouldering the entire burden of accommodation to an artifact, but skillful designers make large parts of this burden vanish by adapting the artifact to the users.[22]
In his bookThe Design of Everyday Things, Norman uses the term "user-centered design" to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside what he deems secondary considerations, such asaesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, designing for error, explainingaffordances and theseven stages of action.[citation needed] The principles and characteristics outlined in the book are relatable to the field of product design, both in a physical and a digital context.[23]
In his bookThe Things that Make Us Smart: Defending the Human Attribute in the Age of the Machine,[24][better source needed] Norman uses the term "cognitive artifacts" to describe "those artificial devices that maintain, display, or operate upon information in order to serve a representational function and that affect human cognitive performance".[citation needed] Similar to hisThe Design of Everyday Things book, Norman argues for the development of machines that fit our minds, rather than have our minds be conformed to the machine.
On the Revised Edition ofThe Design of Everyday Things, Norman backtracks on his previous claims about aesthetics and removed the term User-Centered Design altogether. In the preface of the book, he says :
The first edition of the book focused upon making products understandable and usable. The total experience of a product covers much more than its usability: aesthetics, pleasure, and fun play critically important roles. There was no discussion of pleasure, enjoyment and emotion, Emotion is so important that I wrote an entire book,Emotional Design, about the role it plays in design.[25]
He instead currently uses the term human-centered design and defines it as: "an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving."[citation needed]
The Don Norman Design Award organization was instituted and the inaugural awards bearing his name were announced on September 13, 2024. The DNDA Summit will be held on November 14 and 15, 2024 in San Diego, California.[26]
He is on numerous educational, private, and public sector advisory boards, including the editorial board ofEncyclopædia Britannica. Norman published several important books during his time at UCSD, one of which,User Centered System Design, obliquely referred to the university in the initials of its title. This is a list of select publications.
Per: Born in 1935. James: Yeah, he actually turned 80 around about the same time as we had a Twitter conversation about this interview. Per: Exactly. It was December 25.
01/03/1995 - Donald A. Norman, in Psychology
In 1998, he formed the Nielsen Norman Group alongside Jakob Nielsen, another pioneer of usability methods that remain widely used today, including the 10 Usability Heuristics.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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| Preceded by | ACMSIGDOC Rigo Award 2001 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science 2006 | Succeeded by |
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