An Interview with Don Norman (Howard Rheingold)
What do you think is most important about interfaces?
For Don Norman, interfaces are NOT the place to start, but instead design happens during ideation (or the conceptual phase), and design is a collaboration of different fields of knowledge working together to create sensitive and effective tools: tools that respond to user needs.
Norman stressed the importance of understanding the logic behind the act of designing, which includes considerations for the human factor. In this interview, he sets ground rules for 'good design' and focuses on the idea that design should be inherently 'humane', which is to say that technological tools need to be thought of with a user-centred approach.
"Cultivate Sensitivity to Design" explains how experimenting (observing, testing, etc.) helps designers reach a place of empathy for the user and simplifies complex products or systems in accordance with audience feedback. So, Norman proposes a shift in priorities. The priority is to provide appropriate tools for people who consider the whole system, or the 'big picture.' Design should be task-specific.
He suggests that human-centeredness can be achieved in design through collaborative work. Involving people from diverse specializations (cognitive scientists, industrial designers, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, etc.) to collaborate in the ideation process can create designs that understand user needs and expectations and respond to user habits.
In short, having the knowledge background and perfecting tools through prototyping, testing, and experimenting, are primers to any good design creation. In fact, Norman recommends that we invent a new programme of study wherein "each member [would be] trained in design, cognitive science, and programming.
In sum.
To be a designer is to have the necessary knowledge to create meaningful tools for society.
Good design requires social-research methodologies and involves a back-and-forth dialogue between users and designers, testing and prototyping (re-designing).
Good design is also design that understands human beings; that is, design that is sensitive and that follows natural human behaviour and understands both needs and expectations.
To be a designer today is to be able to open up to various fields of knowledge and adapt design to changed contexts and audiences.
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