Much of Norman's work involves the advocacy of user-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 the design 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 initialism JND (just-noticeable difference) to signify his endeavors to make a difference.[1]
After graduating, Norman took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard 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 at University 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 of cognitive science. Norman eventually became founding chair of the Department of Cognitive Science and chair of the Department of Psychology.
Together with psychologist Tim Shallice, Norman proposed a framework of attentional control of executive functioning.[when?] One of the components of the Norman-Shallice model is the supervisory attentional system.[13]
Norman has received many awards for his work. He received two honorary degrees, one "S. V. della laurea ad honorem" in Psychology from the University of Padua in 1995 and one doctorate in Industrial Design and Engineering from Delft University of Technology.[19][9] In 2001, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and won the Rigo Award from SIGDOC, the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on the Design of Communication (DOC).[20] In 2006, he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.[8] In 2009, Norman was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Design Research Society. In 2011 Norman was elected a member of the National 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 colleague Jakob 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 of user experience design.[21]
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[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 book The 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 as aesthetics. 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 affordances and the seven 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 book The 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 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.[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]
Don Norman Design Award
Don Norman Design Award organization was instituted and the inaugural awards bearing his name were announced on september 13, 2024 and DNDA Summit will be held on November 14 and 15, 2024 in San Diego, California. [26]
Bibliography
He is on numerous educational, private, and public sector advisory boards, including the editorial board of Encyclopædia 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.
Psychology books
Norman, Donald A. (1983). Learning and Memory. W H Freeman & Co. ISBN0716713004.
Norman, Donald A. (1976). Memory and Attention: An Introduction to Human Information Processing. Series in Psychology (2 ed.). John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN0471651370.
Norman, Donald A. (1969). Memory and Attention: An Introduction to Human Information Processing. John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN0471651311.
Usability books
Norman, Don (2013). The Design of Everyday Things. Revised and expanded. Basic Books. ISBN9780465050659.
Norman, Donald A. (2010). Living with Complexity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN978-0262014861.
Norman, Donald A. (2007). The Design of Future Things. Basic Books. ISBN978-0465002276.
Norman, Donald A. (2005). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books. ISBN0465051367.
Norman, Donald A. (1998). The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN9780262140652.
Norman, Donald A. (1993). Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions Of Automobiles. Basic Books. ISBN9780201622362.
Norman, Donald A. (1993). Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine. William Patrick Book. Basic Books. ISBN0201626950.
Norman, Donald A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things (1 ed.). Basic Books. ISBN0465067093.
Other publications
The Trouble with Unix: The User Interface is Horrid.[28][29][30]Datamation, 27 (12) 1981, November, pp. 139–150. Reprinted in Pylyshyn, Z. W., & Bannon, L. J., eds. Perspectives on the Computer Revolution, 2nd revised edition, Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex, 1989.
Direct manipulation interfaces (1985) about direct manipulation interfaces 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)
Norman, Donald A. (1994). Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine (CD-ROM for Mac). Voyager Company. ASINB000CIQ42I. Combining his books, Design of Everyday Things, Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles, Things That Make Us Smart, with various technical reports.
^Royal-Lawson, James; Axbom, Per (August 24, 2016). "Design Doing with Don Norman". Medium. UX Podcast. Retrieved November 14, 2019. 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.
^"Honorary Degrees". Università di Padova. Retrieved November 14, 2019. 01/03/1995 - Donald A. Norman, in Psychology
^"Rigo Award". Special Interest Group on Design of Communication. Archived from the original on February 19, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
^ abLyonnais, Sheena (August 28, 2017). "Where Did the Term "User Experience" Come From?". Adobe Blog. Archived from the original on July 30, 2020. Retrieved November 13, 2019. 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 web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
^ abNorman, Donald A.; Draper, Stephen W., eds. (1986). User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-computer Interaction. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. ISBN0-89859-781-1. OCLC12665902.
^Norman, Donald A. (November 5, 2013). The design of everyday things (Revised and expanded ed.). New York, New York. ISBN9780465050659. OCLC849801329.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^"DNDA 24 Laureates". dnda.design. September 13, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
^Oden, Gregg C.; Lopes, Lola L. (1997). "Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology by Peter H. Lindsay, Donald A. Norman". The American Journal of Psychology. 110 (4): 635–641. doi:10.2307/1423414. JSTOR1423414.