Don Norman is co-founder and Principal Emeritus of Nielsen Norman Group. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, has been awarded three honorary degrees, and is the founder and director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego.
In 1957, Norman received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[7] Norman received a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.[8] He received a PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.
After graduating, Norman took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University and within a year became a lecturer.
After four years with the Center, Norman took a position as an associate professor in the Psychology Department at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Norman applied his training as an engineer and computer scientist, and as an experimental and mathematical psychologist, to the emerging discipline of cognitive science. Norman eventually became founding chair of the Department of Cognitive Science and chair of the Department of Psychology.
In 1986, Norman introduced the term "user-centered design" in the book User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-computer Interaction, a book edited by him and by Stephen W. Draper. In the introduction of the book, the idea that designers should aim their efforts at the people who will use the system is introduced:
In 1988 he published The Psychology of Everyday Things
His book The Design of Everyday Things in 2002 was a follow on. It is a powerful primer on how--and why--some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them., Norman uses the term "user-centered design" to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside what he deems secondary considerations, such as aesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, designing for error, explaining affordances and the seven stages of action.
A revised and expanded edition was published in 2012.
