Quotes from 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

When many people all have the same problem, shouldn't another cause be found? If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed. And if the system induces you to make the error, then it is really badly designed.

The goal is to produce a great product, one that is successful, and that customers love.

Visceral design is what nature does.

Unless it is your ambition to become a nightclub performer and amaze people with great skills of memory, here is a simpler way to dramatically enhance both memory and accuracy: write things down. Writing is a powerful technology: why not use it? Use a pad of paper, or the back of your hand. Write it or type it. Use a phone or a computer. Dictate it. This is what technology is for. The unaided mind is surprisingly limited. It is things that make us smart. Take advantage of them.

key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.

But, in fact, the ready distractibility of attention is a biological necessity, developed through millions of years of evolution as a protective mechanism against unexpected danger: this is the primary function of the visceral level.

It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people.

Our strengths are in our flexibility and creativity, in coming up with solutions to novel problems. We are creative and imaginative, not mechanical and precise. Machines require precision and accuracy; people don't. And we are particularly bad at providing precise and accurate inputs. So why are we always required to do so? Why do we put the requirements of machines above those of people?

Good designers worry a lot about the physical feel of their products. Physical touch and feel can make a huge difference in your appreciation of their creations. Consider the delights of smooth, polished metal, or soft leather, or a soil ...

Engineers and designers who believe they do not need to watch the people who use their products are a major source of the many poor designs that confront us.

Great designers produce pleasurable experiences.

The unaided mind is surprisingly limited. It is things that make us smart. Take advantage of them.

we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors.

The major areas of design relevant to this book are industrial design, interaction design, and experience design. None of the fields is well defined, but the focus of the efforts does vary, with industrial designers emphasizing form and material, interactive designers emphasizing understandability and usability, and experience designers emphasizing the emotional impact.

Ask "Why?" as many times as may be necessary to get to the root cause of the problem and then fix it so it can never occur again.

What are the design implications? Don't count on much being retained in STM. Computer systems often enhance people's frustration when things go wrong by presenting critical information in a message that then disappears from the display just when the person wishes to make use of the information. So how can people remember the critical information? I am not surprised when people hit, kick, or otherwise attack their computers.

When a bridge collapses, we analyze the incident to find the causes of the collapse and reformulate the design rules to ensure that form of accident will never happen again. When we discover that electronic equipment is malfunctioning because it is responding to unavoidable electrical noise, we redesign the circuits to be more tolerant of the noise. But when an accident is thought to be caused by people, we blame them and then continue to do things just as we have always done.

The solution is human-centered design (HCD), an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving.

Good design starts with an understanding of psychology and technology. Good design requires good communication, especially from machine to person, indicating what actions are possible, what is happening, and what is about to happen.

Designers need to focus their attention on the cases where things go wrong, not just on when things work as planned.

Danger awaits those who deliberately violate the frames of a culture.

Beauty comes from the reflective level. Beauty looks below the surface. Beauty comes from conscious reflection and experience. It is influenced by knowledge, learning, and culture. Objects that are unattractive on the surface can give pleasure. Discordant music, for example, can be beautiful. Ugly art can be beautiful.

Cultural constraints are likely to change with time.