Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935) is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
.
He is best known for his books on design, especially ''
The Design of Everyday Things
''The Design of Everyday Things'' is a best-selling book by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman about how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order ...
''. He is widely regarded for his expertise in the fields of
design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...
,
usability engineering
Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human–computer interaction and specifically with devising human–computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. It provides structured methods for achieving ...
, and
cognitive science,
and has shaped the development of the field of
cognitive systems engineering
Cognitive systems engineering (CSE) is a field of study that examines the intersection of people, work, and technology, with a focus on safety-critical systems. The central tenet of cognitive systems engineering is that it views a collection of peo ...
. He is a co-founder of the
Nielsen Norman Group
The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) is an American computer user interface and user experience consulting firm, founded in 1998 by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman. Their work includes an analysis of the interface of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating syst ...
, along with
Jakob Nielsen Jacob or Jakob Nielsen may refer to:
* Jacob Nielsen, Count of Halland (died c. 1309), great grandson of Valdemar II of Denmark
* , Norway (1768-1822)
* Jakob Nielsen (mathematician) (1890–1959), Danish mathematician known for work on automorphi ...
. He is also an
IDEO
IDEO () is a design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 700 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, enviro ...
fellow and a member of the Board of Trustees of
IIT Institute of Design
Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech), founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design.
History
The Institute of Design at Illinois Tech is a school of design ...
in Chicago. He also holds the title of
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of Cognitive Science at the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
. Norman is an active
Distinguished Visiting Professor
Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions of teaching and research within a college or university. In the U.S., the word "professor" informally refers collectively to the academic ranks of assistant professor, asso ...
at the
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is a national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the nation's first public, researc ...
(KAIST), where he spends two months a year teaching.
Much of Norman's work involves the advocacy of
user-centered design
User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or proce ...
.
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 the
design research
Design research was originally constituted as primarily research into the process of design, developing from work in design methods, but the concept has been expanded to include research embedded within the process of design, including work concer ...
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. To this end, Norman named his website with the initialism ''
JND'' (just-noticeable difference) to signify his endeavors to make a difference.
Early academics
In 1957, Norman received a
B.S.
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
degree in
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT).
Norman received an
M.S.
A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...
degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
He received a
PhD in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
from the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
He was one of the earliest graduates from the
Mathematical Psychology
Mathematical psychology is an approach to psychological research that is based on mathematical modeling of perceptual, thought, cognitive and motor processes, and on the establishment of law-like rules that relate quantifiable stimulus characte ...
group at University of Pennsylvania and his advisor was
Duncan Luce.
After graduating, Norman took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Studies at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
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 at
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
(UCSD). Norman applied his training as an engineer and computer scientist, and as an experimental and mathematical psychologist, to the emerging discipline of
cognitive 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 the
Cognitive Science Society
The Cognitive Science Society is a professional society for the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind. The society prom ...
(along with
Roger Schank
Roger Carl Schank (born 1946) is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur.
Beginning in the late 1960s, he pioneered conceptual dependency theory (within th ...
,
Allan Collins, and others), which held its first meeting at the UCSD campus in 1979.
Together with psychologist
Tim Shallice
Timothy Shallice (born 1940) is a professor of neuropsychology and the founding director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, part of University College London. He has been a professor at Cognitive Neuroscience Sector of the International ...
, Norman proposed a framework of attentional control of executive functioning. One of the components of the Norman-Shallice model is the
supervisory attentional system
Executive functions are a cognitive apparatus that controls and manages cognitive processes. Norman and Shallice (1980) proposed a model on executive functioning of attentional control that specifies how thought and action schemata become activated ...
.
Cognitive engineering career
Norman made the transition from cognitive science to
cognitive engineering
Cognitive engineering is a method of study using cognitive psychology to design and develop engineering systems to support the cognitive processes of users.
History
It was an engineering method used in the 1970s at Bell Labs, focused on how peopl ...
by entering the field as a consultant and writer. His article "The truth about Unix: ''The user interface is horrid''" in ''
Datamation'' (1981) catapulted him to a position of prominence in the computer world. Soon after, his career took off outside of academia, although he still remained active at UCSD until 1993. Norman continued his work to further
human-centered design
Human-centered design (HCD, also human-centred design, as used in ISO standards) is an approach to problem-solving commonly used in process, product, service and system design, management, and engineering frameworks that develops solutions to p ...
by serving on numerous university and government advisory boards such as the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Adv ...
(DARPA). He currently serves on numerous committees and advisory boards like at Motorola, the
Toyota National College of Technology,
TED Conference
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
,
Panasonic
formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...
, ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
'' and many more.
Norman was also part of a select team flown in to investigate the 1979
Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
In 1993, Norman left UCSD to join
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
, initially as an Apple Fellow as a User Experience Architect (the first use of the phrase "
User Experience" in a job title), and then as the Vice President of the
Advanced Technology Group. He later worked for
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
before joining with
Jakob Nielsen Jacob or Jakob Nielsen may refer to:
* Jacob Nielsen, Count of Halland (died c. 1309), great grandson of Valdemar II of Denmark
* , Norway (1768-1822)
* Jakob Nielsen (mathematician) (1890–1959), Danish mathematician known for work on automorphi ...
to form the
Nielsen Norman Group
The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) is an American computer user interface and user experience consulting firm, founded in 1998 by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman. Their work includes an analysis of the interface of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating syst ...
in 1998. He returned to academia as a professor of
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
at
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
, where he was co-director of the
Segal Design Institute until 2010. In 2014, he returned to UCSD to become director of the newly established The Design Lab housed at the
.
Awards and honors
Norman has received many awards for his work. He received two
honorary degree
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...
s, one "S. V. della laurea ad honorem" in Psychology from the
University of Padua
The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from B ...
in 1995 and one doctorate in Industrial Design and Engineering from
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...
.
In 2001, he was inducted as a
Fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
of the
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
(ACM) and won the Rigo Award from
SIGDOC
SIGDOC is the Special Interest Group on Design of Communication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), an international learned society for computing. ACM SIGDOC was founded in 1975 by Joseph "Joe" T. Rigo.
Description
SIGDOC’s miss ...
, the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on the Design of Communication (DOC). In 2006, he received the
Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.
In 2009, Norman was elected an Honorary Fellow of the
Design Research Society
The Design Research Society (DRS), founded in the United Kingdom in 1966,Tovey, M. (2011). Researching Design Education. In E. Bohemia, B. Borja de Mozota & L. Collina (Eds.)Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium for Design Education Resea ...
. In 2011 Norman was elected a member of the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
for the development of design principles based on human cognition that enhance the interaction between people and technology.
Nielsen Norman Group
Norman, alongside colleague
Jakob Nielsen Jacob or Jakob Nielsen may refer to:
* Jacob Nielsen, Count of Halland (died c. 1309), great grandson of Valdemar II of Denmark
* , Norway (1768-1822)
* Jakob Nielsen (mathematician) (1890–1959), Danish mathematician known for work on automorphi ...
, formed the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) in 1998.
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 of
usability
Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...
.
User-centered design
In 1986, Norman introduced the term "user-centered design" in the book ''User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-computer Interaction''
'','' 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.
In his book ''
The Design of Everyday Things
''The Design of Everyday Things'' is a best-selling book by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman about how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order ...
'', 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 as
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, designing for error, explaining
affordance
Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'', and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-know ...
s and the
seven stages of action Seven stages of action is a term coined by the usability consultant Donald Norman.
The phrase appears in chapter two of his book ''The Design of Everyday Things'', describing the psychology of a person performing a task.
Building up the Stages ...
.
In his book ''The Things that Make Us Smart: Defending the Human Attribute in the Age of the Machine'', 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". Similar to his ''The 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 of ''The 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.
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."
Bibliography
He is on numerous educational, private, and public sector advisory boards, including the editorial board of ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
''. 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.
Psychology books
*
*
*
*
Usability books
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Other publications
*''Direct manipulation interfaces'' (1985) about
direct manipulation interface
In computer science, human–computer interaction, and interaction design, direct manipulation is an approach to interfaces which involves continuous representation of objects of interest together with rapid, reversible, and incremental actions a ...
s in collaboration with E. L. Hutchins (first author) and J.D. Hollan
*''User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction'' (1986) (editor in collaboration with Stephen Draper)
* Combining his books, ''Design of Everyday Things'', ''Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles'', ''Things That Make Us Smart'', with various technical reports.
See also
*
Cognitive engineering
Cognitive engineering is a method of study using cognitive psychology to design and develop engineering systems to support the cognitive processes of users.
History
It was an engineering method used in the 1970s at Bell Labs, focused on how peopl ...
*
Executive system
In cognitive science and neuropsychology, executive functions (collectively referred to as executive function and cognitive control) are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and suc ...
*
Human action cycle
*
Human-computer interaction
*
Human-centered design
Human-centered design (HCD, also human-centred design, as used in ISO standards) is an approach to problem-solving commonly used in process, product, service and system design, management, and engineering frameworks that develops solutions to p ...
*
User-centered design
User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or proce ...
*
Interaction design
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Beyond the digital aspect, interaction design is also useful when creating physical (non-digital) produ ...
References
External links
*
*
Publications by Donald Normanfrom Interaction-Design.org
* Video
Franklin Institute Award on Donald Normanfrom April 2006 by the
Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...
*Video:
*Video
Living With Complexity April 2011 talk at Stanford University
An evening of UX Hacking with Don Norman at Stanford" (Stanford University, December 17, 2013)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norman, Donald
1935 births
Living people
Apple Inc. employees
Apple Fellows
MIT School of Engineering alumni
University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni
Harvard University faculty
University of California, San Diego faculty
Northwestern University faculty
American computer scientists
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Human–computer interaction researchers
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
Design researchers
Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows
20th-century American non-fiction writers