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Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right.

Donald A. Norman

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Donald A. Norman
Academics
Clever
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More quotes by Donald A. Norman

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The hardest part of design ... is keeping features out.
Donald A. Norman
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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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No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service - from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly. That's systems thinking.
Donald A. Norman
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Attractive things work better When you wash and wax a car, it drives better, doesn’t it? Or at least feels like it does.
Donald A. Norman
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Technology may change rapidly, but people change slowly. The principals [of design] come from understanding of people. They remain true forever.
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.
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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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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Readers always seem to think that the author has some control over the design of their books.
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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How do you discover a need that nobody yet knows about? This is where the product breakthroughs come through.
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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Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.
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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The current paradigm is so thoroughly established that the only way to change is to start over again.
Donald A. Norman
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In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.
Donald A. Norman
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When I use a direct manipulation system whether for text editing, drawing pictures, or creating and playing games I do think of myself not as using a computer but as doing the particular task. The computer is, in effect, invisible. The point cannot be overstressed: make the computer system invisible.
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 believe that robots should only have faces if they truly need them
Donald A. Norman
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As the technology matures, it becomes less and less relevant. The technology is taken for granted. Now, new customers enter the marketplace, customers who are not captivated by technology, but who instead want reliability, convenience, no fuss or bother, and low cost.
Donald A. Norman