The Design of Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman (born 1935) is an American researcher, educator, and author specializing in design, engineering, usability, and cognitive science. Norman’s educational background directly informs the content of The Design of Everyday Things. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957, completing a master’s degree in the same field at the University of Pennsylvania in 1959. Three years later, he received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, becoming one of the first graduates of the school’s new Mathematical Psychology Group. Norman is also the recipient of two honorary degrees: one in Industrial design from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the other from the University of Padua in Italy.

Like The Design of Everyday Things, Norman’s professional experiences focus on the interrelation of design and human behavior. From 1962 to 1966, Norman held fellowships and a lectureship in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University. He then joined the Departments of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he taught for 29 years. In 1981, Norman shifted his focus from cognitive science to cognitive engineering, entering the field as a writer and consultant. His career outside academia skyrocketed after he published "The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid,” in Datamation (1981).

From that point onward, Norman straddled academia and industry, offering him unique insight into both fields. In addition to teaching at UC San Diego, he was Professor of Computer Science, Psychology, and Cognitive Science at Northwestern University and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Norman was also Vice President of Advanced Technology at Apple and an executive at the multinational technology company, Hewlett-Packard. In addition, he sat on 10 advisory boards, including an education startup called ScienceMedia, an information startup called Knowledgen, the National Academy of Science, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the US Department of Defense.

Norman currently holds emeritus positions at UC San Diego and continues to work as a consultant for the company he co-founded in 1998, which focuses on HCD. In addition to Xerox and Epsco, Norman consulted on the Nuclear Power Plant Control Room Operations Safety and on the Human Interface Science Advisory Committee. 

Norman’s expansive publication history attests to his expertise in design, engineering, usability, and cognition. In addition to The Design of Everyday Things, he has published three books on memory and learning (Memory and Attention: An Introduction to Human Information Processing, 1969; Models of Human Memory, 1970; and Learning and Memory, 1980), as well as dozens of articles, essays, and technical reports about design, memory, cognition, human error, and human-computer interaction. The Design of Everyday Things not only solidified Norman’s place as a leader in the field of HCD, but also remains a foundational text for aspiring designers.