Don Norman has been a professor, industry executive, consultant, keynote speaker, and author. He’s worked in electrical engineering, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and design. He’s the author of several books, among them Design for a Better World, his latest; also including The Design of Everyday Things, Living with Complexity,, Emotional Design and The Design of Future Things. Don believes you should design for people the way they are, not for how you want them to be. He joins the Plutopia Podcast this time as we discuss his journey from 1988’s The Design of Everyday Things to his latest book, Design for a Better World.
Don Norman:
I wanted to do something that actually was much more important for the world – and the world is a mess and I thought, what can I do to make a difference? And I thought about all the problems that exist, but I’ve also said, gee, you know, lots of good people have written about all these problems. I don’t have anything to add. And I looked for the solutions. Well, lots of good people have written about the solutions. I don’t have anything to add. Most of them are technology solutions, however. But then I said, wait a minute, we have all these problems, we have all these solutions but they aren’t being done. Why aren’t they being done? And I realized the real issue was human behavior and that maybe that’s where I could say something. And so what I tried to do was put together the problems that I thought I could say something new on.
Photo by Peter Belanger
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Links:
Wendy Grossman’s review of Living with Complexity
“Responsible AI: Bridging From Ethics to Practice” by Ben Shneiderman
Heavy Weather, by Bruce Sterling