Designing with people in mind
US design guru says that too few products take account of user needs
Designers and engineers must work harder on their observation skills in order to design the next generation of successful products.
“Designing for people is hard”, says Don Norman, Breed professor of design at Northwestern University in the US.
Norman is passionate about pointing out what is wrong with many products that people are supposed to make use of – and what needs to be done to remedy that. In the industrial domain, he cites examples of machine tools where the only way to read everything on CNC controls is to lean dangerously into working areas.
Many of his ideas on the design of future products are set out in his book ‘The design of future things’.
“Engineers are logical, sensible,” he says. “People are not logical. You have to design for the way they are.”
A longer article on Don Norman appears in the March issue of Eureka.
For more information: http://www.nngroup.com
