Top 120 Donald A. Norman Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “If you think the products don’t match what you want from a product, don’t buy it.”

— Donald A. Norman

52. “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

53. “Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself.”

— Donald A. Norman

54. “Only the most sophisticated of beings can lie and cheat, and get away with it.”

— Donald A. Norman

55. “The designer has an obligation to provide an appropriate conceptual model for the way that the device works. It doesn’t have to completely accurate but it has to be sufficiently accurate that it will help in both the learning of the operation and also dealing with novel situations.”

— Donald A. Norman

56. “Any time you see signs or labels added to a device, it is an indication of bad design: a simple lock should not require instructions.”

— Donald A. Norman

57. “Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule.”

— Donald A. Norman

58. “You won’t catch me giving clear lectures.”

— Donald A. Norman

59. “Procedural knowledge is difficult or impossible to write down and difficult to teach. It is best taught by demonstration and best learned through practice.”

— Donald A. Norman

60. “The problem with emotion was that it was clearly something important, but-at least according to the old philosophy-it was something to overcome.”

— Donald A. Norman

61. “If you’re more susceptible to interruption, you do more out of the box thinking.”

— Donald A. Norman

62. “Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion.”

— Donald A. Norman

63. “A big ethical question is what happens after people stop using the device. Does it degrade the environment? Could it have been designed so it would actually be good for the environment?”

— Donald A. Norman

64. “If the skill is easily automated, it wasn’t essential.”

— Donald A. Norman

65. “Scientists are always skeptics.”

— Donald A. Norman

66. “The current paradigm is so thoroughly established that the only way to change is to start over again.”

— Donald A. Norman

67. “It was always amusing to be inside Apple and read what journalists said we were doing.”

— Donald A. Norman

68. “Human intelligence is highly flexible and adaptive, superb at inventing procedures and objects that overcome its own limits. The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities.”

— Donald A. Norman

69. “Readers always seem to think that the author has some control over the design of their books.”

— Donald A. Norman

70. “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

— Donald A. Norman

71. “Also note that invariably when we design something that can be used by those with disabilities, we often make it better for everyone.”

— Donald A. Norman

72. “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

73. “Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.”

— Donald A. Norman

74. “Design is successful only if the final product is successful – if people buy it, use it, and enjoy it, thus spreading the word. A design that people do not purchase is a failed design, no matter how great the design team might consider it.”

— Donald A. Norman

75. “If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed.”

— Donald A. Norman

76. “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

77. “I believe that robots should only have faces if they truly need them.”

— Donald A. Norman

78. “Complexity is acceptable as long as it is intelligible and necessary. We want to avoid needless complications.”

— Donald A. Norman

79. “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

80. “In the consumer economy taste is not the criterion in the marketing of expensive soft drinks, usability is not the primary criterion in the marketing of home and office appliances. We are surrounded with objects of desire, not objects of use.”

— Donald A. Norman

81. “It is easy to design devices that work well when everything goes as planned. The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.”

— Donald A. Norman

82. “Because visceral design is about initial reactions, it can be studied quite simply by putting people in front of a design and waiting for reactions. In the best of circumstances, the visceral reaction to appearance works so well that people take one look and say “I want it.” Then they might ask, “What does it do?” And last, “And how much does it cost?” This is the reaction the visceral designer strives for, and it can work. Much of traditional market research involves this aspect of design.”

— Donald A. Norman

83. “Everyday people are not very good designers.”

— Donald A. Norman

84. “One way of overcoming the fear of the new is to make it look like the old.”

— Donald A. Norman

85. “Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior, causing otherwise sensible people to do things they know are wrong and possibly dangerous.”

— Donald A. Norman

86. “The hardest part of design is getting the requirements right, which means ensuring that the right problem is being solved, as well as that the solution is appropriate. Requirements made in the abstract are invariably wrong. Requirements produced by asking people what they need are invariably wrong. Requirements are developed by watching people in their natural environment.”

— Donald A. Norman

87. “The meanings of today may not be the meanings of the future.”

— Donald A. Norman

88. “Skeuomorphic is the technical term for incorporating old, familiar ideas into new technologies, even though they no longer play a functional role. Skeuomorphic designs are often comfortable for traditionalists, and indeed the history of technology shows that new technologies and materials often slavishly imitate the old for no apparent reason except that is what people know how to do. Early.”

— Donald A. Norman

89. “Usable designs are not necessarily enjoyable to use.”

— Donald A. Norman

90. “A device is easy to use when the set of possible actions is visible, when the controls and displays exploit natural mappings.”

— Donald A. Norman

91. “When companies try to increase sales by matching every feature of their competitors, they end up hurting themselves. After all, when products from two companies match feature by feature, there is no longer any reason for a customer to prefer one over another.”

— Donald A. Norman

92. “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

93. “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

94. “Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction.”

— Donald A. Norman

95. “AS for all those mistakes I make – they are on purpose – to teach you how to deal with them.”

— Donald A. Norman

96. “Am I an Apple bigot? No. I can critique their products and their customer service philosophy. But overall, they do better than any other player.”

— Donald A. Norman

97. “We must design our technologies for the way people actually behave, not the way we would like them to behave. Moreover, the automobile does.”

— Donald A. Norman

98. “We have become dependent upon our technologies to navigate the world, to hold intelligent conversation, to write intelligently, and to remember.”

— Donald A. Norman

99. “Once again, the designer should assume that people will be interrupted during their activities and that they may need assistance in resuming their operations.”

— Donald A. Norman

100. “A story tells of Henry Ford’s buying scrapped Ford cars and having his engineers disassemble them to see which parts failed and which were still in good shape. Engineers assumed this was done to find the weak parts and make them stronger. Nope. Ford explained that he wanted to find the parts that were still in good shape. The company could save money if they redesigned these parts to fail at the same time as the others.”

— Donald A. Norman