Don Norman's jnd.org / user advocacy and human-centered design

New essays and perhaps Book reports coming Real Soon Now

In addition to my writing and my consulting work with the Nielsen Norman group, I teach in two programs at Northwestern University: a one-year graduate program leading to an MS degree in Engineering Design and Innovation (MS-EDI) and the two-year joint MBA / Engineering degree program between Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern Engineering: Design and Operations. MMM is an existing two-year program leading to two degrees: an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the McCormick School of Engineering that emphasizes Design & Operations: design cannot succeed without efficient operations behind the scenes. Operations are always in support or products or services, so the pair makes huge sense. Business Week has already recognized this program as one of the best Design + Business programs in the world. (I co-direct MMM.)

MS-EDI trains engineers to understand design thinking and therefore to work constructively with designers (instead of the mutual unintelligibility that now takes place). MMM trains managers, GMs, and eventual CEOs who understand how to integrate design and operations into a systems approach to management. Design thinking is a way of breaking through established thought patterns and providing innovative solutions, whether on the factory floor, the design studio, or the boardroom.

Books

The Design of Future Things is about the ever-increasing role of automation in our homes and automobiles. Sample chapters are in the "Books" section of this website. (Find the Design of Future Things at Amazon.com )

The next book is coming along, but slowly, painfully slowly. I'm in seclusion at a secret writer's retreat, working on it. I check my email every few days, usually around 6 PM EDT, but will not have a physical presence until I have a solid draft. See my columns for Interactions magazine for hints. (Scroll to the index for "Interaction articles" in the essay section of this website.) One working title is "Acting smart without being smart: leveraging knowledge in the physical and social world."

Consulting

I don’t normally talk about my consulting work, but I’m particularly proud of two: Tango and reQall.

Tango: H&R Block’s new income tax program Wikipedia says:

Tango by H&R Block includes integrated and continuous one-touch access to tax professionals, combined with a vertical, modern design for an animated, intuitive and interactive tax preparation experience. Tango creates a new category of aided online tax preparation, the first of its kind based on Don Norman’s concept of emotional design.

(No, I didn’t write that entry.) It is a tax program with an attitude. The creative team did indeed listen to me, not only about “Emotional Design” but also about my other powerful rules: “no error messages,” "no navigation" (including no back button): wow, was it difficult getting people to understand those two rules. When Tango finds questionable entries or missing information, it uses this as a means of helping and guiding. Moreover, you enter information whenever you wish to: skip over stuff when you wish to. Tango keeps track. No navigation. Just go to where you want to go. Initial reviews of the interaction are great. (The calculators on the H&R Block website follow the same principles.)

ReQall: I am officially empowered as "Chief Mentor" of reQall. Call reQall from any phone and speak whatever you want to remember. It then shows up in your email as text, as a voice message, and on a website. Even automatically on your calendar. We worked hard to make it really simple, to eliminate all the features that came to mind. No features, therefore no fuss. Simple and powerful. Developed by a team, some of whom worked with me at Apple. Neat. (The iPhone implementation is cool. And wait until you see the next, still secret version!) It is also a teamwork tool. And it is free. (They make money on the volume.)

Schedule

(Some consulting engagements and board meeting are not shown below, both because they are not public and because confidentiality agreements often preclude mentioning them.).

In Praise of Good Design

(The complete set is in "In praise of good design.") Send suggestions to "products at jnd.org". No bashing -- just praise. Note, I'm not interested in good or bad websites (I leave those to Jakob Nielsen), just physical products or services.

Recent Book Reviews

Recent Essays

Why is 37signals so arrogant?

David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals says: "I'm not designing software for other people, I'm designing it for me." Wow. That is the sort of arrogance that the design community clustered around 37signals disdains -- or so I thought. Understanding the true needs of customers is essential for business success. Making sure the product is elegant, functional and understandable is also essential. The disdain for customers shown by Hansson of 37signals is an arrogance bound to fail. As long as 37signals is a hobby, where programmers code for themselves, it may very well succeed as a small enterprise with its current size of 10 employees. I'm happy for them, and for the numerous small developers and small companies that find their products useful. But their attitude is a symbol: a symbol of eventual failure. Too bad. In fact, that attitude is not so much arrogance as it is selfishness: they are selfish. A little less arrogance and a lot more empathy would turn these brilliant programmers into a brilliant company, a brilliant success.

Waiting: A Necessary Part of Life

Interaction design is about interfaces, which means it is about synchronizing the events of different systems, about memories, buffers, queues and waiting rooms. Waiting is an unavoidable component of interfaces, an unavoidable part of life. Just as dirt collects in crevices, buffers collect in the interfaces between systems. It is their natural home, and life would not work without them. I have become fascinated by buffers. I see them everywhere I look. They cannot be escaped.

A Fetish for Numbers: Hospital Care

I've been spending a lot of time in hospitals recently. No, not as a patient, as an observer — following doctors and nurses on their grand rounds, watching patients get admitted, nurses doing shift changes, pharmacists filling prescriptions, and then watching nurses actually deliver the prescribed medication to their patients, waving barcode readers over the prescriptions, the medication, and the patients. The modern hospital is a complex system, with multiple complex interactions among people, equipment, laws, institutions, and a confusing wealth of information. It is time to turn our attention to the multiple interfaces and design issues within this complex system. Healthcare is a problem that needs immediate attention. We need to start now, for the issues are life-threatening.

This Website

This website was selected for inclusion in the National Science Digital Library Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology. August, 2002

The site was recoded for Movable Type by Matthew Goddard ( ), who also maintains the site. He can be reached at webmaster at jnd.org.

Don Norman's jnd website