Don Norman on Design & Success

Don Norman on success: HK: Have you ever thought about success?

DN: No. I think, when I’m trying to advise students and other people about their life sometimes they worry about how will I be successful and they worry about what I should do? I think, those are bad questions, both of them; you should not try to be successful, you should not think about what other people think you should do. The most important thing in life is to do what you enjoy.

Two major philosophies; so here’s what I want to do in life, I want to make a difference, and I want to enjoy myself while doing that. I really feel that when you’re deciding what kind of work to do you should do things you enjoy, and quite often the things that you enjoy are things that other people think are crazy, don’t have any relevance. You are a good example, everybody thinks that what you are doing is silly, crazy; what are you doing, how do you live, how are you going around? What is the result of this kind of interview? And you don’t care at all.

DN: You say, this is something I really care about, and you think, it will be actually important if I can meet many people, it will make a difference. And you try to talk to them and understand about success, and you are having fun while doing it. Here’s my experience. When you do something you really enjoy you will do well, you will work very hard at it. And many years later people say, oh, how brilliant you were, and what a difference you made; because the most significant things are things that are different, and therefore are never recognised at the time, the recognition comes later. So in that way many successful people always think they’re a failure, because if they’re doing something really important that’s really different the rest of the world doesn’t understand it, or thinks it’s wrong or crazy and ignores it.

So take a look at Douglas Engelbart, the person who invented the mouse and invented the modern computing, when he first started people thought he was crazy. He had trouble getting money, he never completed his project and he was not well recognised, and he was therefore very upset and bitter for most of his life. And now he’s very old, but people are saying, wow, he was brilliant.

HK” [Laugh] Society is not that clever. Or should I say it’s not crazy enough…

DN: And people are saying how much foresight he showed, and how he created what is today the modern industry. Today he is very famous, well-known, but he still feels very bad because it’s too late, he said; where was it when I needed it?

HK: So everyone thought he was just crazy?

DN: Yes.

HK: I was wondering whether we can socially define the term success or not? Having your perspective I think it is impossible.

DN: Well, success is usually judged by other people. I think that many of the people that I respect most are not happy; they may be happy in their lives but they’re always unhappy with their work, and that includes me. That’s the way it should be, you have to have standards, and you have to strive for something, and in many ways the worst thing that can happen to a person is to have a goal and then to accomplish it, then what? What’s interesting is that people who are really successful are always striving and always unhappy that they haven’t managed what they really want to do.

When i first started doing psychology, I was rebelling against the standard behavioristic approach. Instead I was introducing the then novel concepts of information processing, of trying to understand the mechanisms of mind. To psychologists of the mid 20th century, that was heresy. I was ignored in the very beginning, I was told that was horrible. I remember I once gave a talk; early on in my career I was invited by a psychology department in the United States to give a talk. I gave a talk and the chairman of the department said I was an insult to psychology.

DN: And I’ve had other such examples where I gave a major talk at the Human Factor Society and the chairman of the Human Factor Society walked off the stage.

But years later I heard how the young members of the department of psychology thought that I was correct. Actually, in the end they forced the chairman to resign; and the same with the Human Factor Society.

So the point is I’ve had to fight these battles because I like to work in areas where nobody else has worked, and I also like to question the common wisdom. Everybody thinks something is right; then I like to come in and say, well, let me question that, it isn’t. Because it’s quite often the things that we assume are so right that we don’t even think about it, we don’t question. But when you question it you discover it’s not right; it’s just that everybody has believed it so nobody has thought to question it.

And that’s what I’ve been doing more and more as I look at design in business, to think about all the things that designers think are so important. When I look carefully, there’s no evidence. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but it also does not mean they’re right; so it’s important to get evidence.

HK: What about design, if there is a successful design, what is it?

DN: Well, the word design is a problem, it means many, many different things. Electrical engineers design circuits, material scientists design new materials, people design bridges, people design clothes and fashions. Many designers design the appearance of something, others are much concerned about the function, the usability, the utility it provides to people; so the word design is complex.

The way I use it is more in line with what has become industrial design, but even that is wrong because industrial design tended to be a 20th Century development of designers who designed the equipment and the consumer goods, with locomotives or aeroplanes or automobiles or candid camera. Look at the Canon camera you are using. It is very well designed. it is comfortable to hold, and even though it has many controls and features, they are laid out nicely so that the important ones are easy to find and use. that kind of design requires deep understanding how people take pictures. That is good design.

Today where so much is controlled by computers it means that things are invisible, and so we have a new field that’s called interaction design; designing this whole interaction which really means designing an experience. And that’s interesting, you can’t see or touch an experience; having designed an experience, that experience is something that’s in the person’s head, not in the product you design; so all you can do is design an opportunity to have a good experience. Well, the best of our modern products and the best of our modern services are good experiences which may have problems and things, but at the end you say, that was wonderful; that’s good design.

So, Disney, go to a Disney park, people very much dislike having to wait in the lines. But if you asked them would they go again, they say, yes, because the total experience is carefully designed that you should walk out being very happy.

HK: A wonderful experience.

DN: I’m trying to understand what makes for a good service, what makes for a good organisation, how do you manage to make all this come together? I’ve been writing a lot about the role of design companies who say, a design company is hired, they come in, they do brilliant work, they have an innovative idea, they give it to the company, they go away and nothing ever happens. Well, why not? Because the idea is not enough.

Here’s an example, what you’re doing; you had this idea. But in order to make it happen it takes a lot of work, a tremendous amount of work, several years of your life. That’s the way it is with products and services, having the idea is just the beginning; to make it happen, now, that’s what’s really hard.

HK: Great. I just want to ask you about your thoughts on the relation between design and money, or being famous? Will good design be automatically famous, or make money?

DN: No, which is neither; good design does not automatically make you famous, and good design does not automatically bring in money; so what?

You see, that’s why the goal is to try to make a difference, to try to do something that’s important. You have to feel good about it, you might feel dissatisfied, you might feel, oh, I’m sure I could have done better; maybe somebody else could have done better, but you have to do the best you can. And you should not be asking whether it is making money or whether it is making you famous, because lots of people are famous for very silly things, for the wrong things.

HK: [Laugh] A person like you is entitled to say so.

DN: It’s nice when people appreciate the work you’ve done and understand it properly; and that takes time, it takes years, sometimes decades; and as for money? Well, it depends what it is. I’ll come back to your project once more, it’s a really good example. People might today find it, yes, it’s kind of interesting; and maybe ten years from now when some people think studying success and happiness are very important to do, they will discover all the work you did and say, oh, this is a very valuable collection of information. Other people have to read it, think about it, understand it, decide it makes some important statements that they could use in the work they are doing, and other people build on it. So its importance comes only if other people build on top of what you have done and do more and more; and that takes time.

HK: Oh, that’s a great advice for this research.

DN: Now, suppose this all happens, what money will you get? There’s no money. Will you care?

HK: Not at all.

DN: Also usually if you’re doing things that eventually people think are good, the money will take care of itself. Will you become very, very rich? No, but will you be comfortable? Probably.

HK: As you were in Apple, I want to ask about the critical differentiator of Apple from others in terms of design?

DN: Well, I think that the major differentiation that Apple has is that from the first day it was concerned doing things for its customers that the customers liked. And so in many ways Apple has become a religion.

HK: Fair enough.

DN: All the time Apple’s always thought about making it easy, so ease of use. And then from the very beginning, also, it should be attractive; early computers were not attractive. Early computers were boxes, clumsy, made by engineers, square edges; and basically you bought the cheapest box you could find, some aluminium, rectangular box and you stuck the computer in. Apple realized that computers were going into homes and were going to be used by non-technical people. So they had to be attractive, really easy to use and to understand and very practical.

Amazon is very similar, Amazon has always tried very hard to make it easy for the customer to give suggestions that were optional but useful, to make it easy to return the goods, to make it easy to say, oh, this isn’t working, I want to change my mind; even after you’ve ordered something you can quickly say, no.

HK: The final question, back to success, what would be your advice to achieve success in general life?

DN: This is what we talked at first. First, don’t try. If you’re driven to be successful, you will probably fail; and even if you succeed you will probably succeed at the wrong things. So find out what it is that you really like. Now think about what skills do I need to be successful here, and what am I good at and what am I bad at; and then pursue that.

So to my history, I’m bad at a lot of things, and so I try very hard to structure my activities and things so I don’t have to do those things; because if I’m bad at it, I will not enjoy it, and I won’t be good at doing it. I’m always trying to learn things though. I’m 75 years old, and I’m still learning a new topic every year.

Now, sometimes I find there’s something I really don’t like, and I’m not good at it, but it’s essential to what I’m trying to do. Here’s a good example; I was an engineer by training at MIT, electrical engineer. Engineers are known to be very bad at working with people, at understanding people, and horrible writers; and I was all of that. Obviously to be successful at what I’m doing, it’s a social enterprise, so I had to overcome those. And I got a PhD degree in psychology eventually.

Second, do what you like, do what you think is important to you; and do it well, which means try to avoid the things you’re really bad at, focus on the things you’re really good at. Unless there’s a couple of critical things. Maybe you need to know some mathematics, maybe you need to know how to draw, maybe you need to know how to write; if those are important, then learn them.