Quote

It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.

Donald A. Norman

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Donald A. Norman
Dictates
Arbitrary
Meaningless
Machines
Design
Duty
Understand
People

More quotes by Donald A. Norman

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What makes something simple or complex? It's not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has: It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates.
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If you're more susceptible to interruption, you do more out of the box thinking.
Donald A. Norman
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I believe that robots should only have faces if they truly need them
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Forget the complaints against complexity instead, complain about confusion.
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It was always amusing to be inside Apple and read what journalists said we were doing
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Only the most sophisticated of beings can lie and cheat, and get away with it.
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In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.
Donald A. Norman
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Behavioral design is all about feeling in control. Includes: usability, understanding, but also the feel.
Donald A. Norman
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It is relatively easy to design for the perfect cases, when everything goes right, or when all the information required is available in proper format
Donald A. Norman
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When you have trouble with things—whether it's figuring out whether to push or pull a door or the arbitrary vagaries of the modern computer and electronics industries—it's not your fault. Don't blame yourself: blame the designer.
Donald A. Norman
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Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.
Donald A. Norman
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The major problems facing the development of products that are safer, less prone to error, and easier to use and understand are not technological: they are social and organizational.
Donald A. Norman
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AS for all those mistakes I make - they are on purpose - to teach you how to deal with them
Donald A. Norman
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Having the best product means nothing if the people won't buy it.
Donald A. Norman
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Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made.
Donald A. Norman
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Isn't one of your first exercises in learning how to communicate to write a description of how to tie your shoelaces? The point being that it's basically impossible to use text to show that
Donald A. Norman
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I'm not a fan of technology . I'm a fan of pedagogy, of understanding how people learn and the most effective learning methods. But technology enables some exciting changes.
Donald A. Norman
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Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [...] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is.
Donald A. Norman
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I think there is a tendency in science to measure what is measurable and to decide that what you cannot measure must be uninteresting.
Donald A. Norman
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Simplification is as much in the mind as it is in the device.
Donald A. Norman