Don Norman is a legend in user experience design. He has been at the forefront of human-computer interaction since the 1960s, a pioneer in user-centered (or human-centered design) design. He has a long history in academia at UC San Diego, but is also vice president of Apple's senior technology team (he first joined the company as a user experience architect, first in a job title) use the word "user experience").
Don now manages the Design Lab at UC San Diego and has authored numerous books on the subject of design (his most influential, Design Psychology, has recently been revised, updated and republished). We asked him to share some of his knowledge and advice for UX designers of all skill levels.
Literally, your book is about user-centered design. What does this word mean to you?
In the late 1980s, my research team, then at the University of California, San Diego, was very concerned about the difficulties people had with computers. We started to focus on how people relate to technology. When home computers started coming out, like the Apple II, IBM PC, and DOS, all of these things weren't made for people. So we decided to explore how to design for those who must use them.
Many companies, especially Apple and Microsoft, are starting to realize this. They sell to homes and people keep getting confused. They are written by programmers, not designed. If you make a mistake, they will blame you with technical rhetoric.
Now, more and more industries are starting to understand that it makes sense and makes sense to design for the people who use your product, making your customers happier and thus lowering your costs.
The word "user" has always bothered me, though. I don't like calling people users. We turned to human-centred design. Even if it bothers me, I don't call people "people". So today, we call it human-centred design.
How does the term human-centricity apply when you're designing for millions of different people?
The human-centred design approach we design may be suitable for designing for a small number of people. Frankly, these methods are inappropriate when you are designing for millions of people. A variation of this design is called activity-centric design. If you design something that people find suitable for an activity, they will accept it and learn it, even if it's awkward.
The violin is a good example. It's a crazy contraption, you have to twist your hands, arms and fingers to play it, and it causes a lot of career damage. Many violinists had to give up because of this. But everyone thought "that's how a violin is supposed to work", so no complaints about the design of the violin.
I'm talking about the opposite approach. If you really understand this activity, you will do your best to learn it. It seems natural and obvious that you drive b2b data a car to the best of your ability, but we forget that it took months to learn how to drive.
Is this about the purpose of your design?
This is not so much a purpose as it is composition. We don't want computers or cars, really. We want other things, but our computers or cars can do it. Now with a car, most people use it for transportation. It's the same as our computer, it's a tool for other things.
We designed these tools to be easy to understand and a suitable tool for doing other things. its entire activity.