Design is the science of the artificial, but what makes for good design?
Everything designed is man-made, but not everything man-made is designed. There are ways to study and teach good design theory, but implementation and human use is needed to refine and inform the field to make things more efficient and intuitive.
Donald A. Norman is a professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego, who has also taught at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is the founding Director of the Design Lab and was a member of the Nielsen Norman Group. Don is also the author of several books. His latest book on design, Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered, will be released in early 2023 and joins a large library of other notable books he has written on the subject, including The Design Of Everyday Things, Living with Complexity, and Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things among many others.
Don and Greg discuss Don’s work at Apple and how design thinking has evolved over time. They talk about what it means to think of design in human-centered or people-centered ways and how optimal design can be different depending on the user and the needs of the space. They talk about how design has spread from product design to service design to even business model design. Don recounts resistance to design thinking in his business school classes and why the students have difficulty reframing the way we all think of this essential element of the world.