Top 120 Donald A. Norman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.”

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

55. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

57. “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

58. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

60. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

62. “Engineers and designers simultaneously know too much and too little. They know too much about the technology and too little about how other people live their live and do their activities.”

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

64. “The argument is not between adding features and simplicity, between adding capability and usability. The real issue is about design: designing things that have the power required for the job while maintaining understandabili ty, the feeling of control, and the pleasure of accomplishment.”

— Donald A. Norman

65. “Scientists are always skeptics.”

— Donald A. Norman

66. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

68. “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

69. “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

70. “A conceptual model is an explanation, usually highly simplified, of how something works. It doesn’t have to be complete or even accurate as long as it is useful.”

— Donald A. Norman

71. “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

72. “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

73. “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

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. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

77. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

79. “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

80. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

83. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

86. “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

87. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

89. “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

90. “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

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. “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

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

— Donald A. Norman

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

— Donald A. Norman

96. “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

97. “When people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentration upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem.”

— Donald A. Norman

98. “Fire,” yells someone in a theater. Immediately everyone stampedes toward the exits. What do they do at the exit door? Push. If the door doesn’t open, they push harder. But what if the door opens inward and must be pulled, not pushed? Highly anxious, highly focused people are very unlikely to think of pulling.”

— 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. “The designer shouldn’t think of a simple dichotomy between errors and correct behavior; rather, the entire interaction should be treated as a cooperative endeavor between person and machine, one in which misconceptions can arise on either side.”

— Donald A. Norman