WATCH: Don Norman on The San Diego Design Lab

May 12, 2015

On Monday, May 4, the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation hosted a lecture and discussion by user experience design pioneer, Don Norman, Professor Emeritus, Cognitive Science, UC San Diego. In a talk titled “The San Diego Design Lab. Human-Technology Teamwork,” Dr. Norman discussed the origins and current status of the newly formed UC San Diego Design Lab with its three main themes: active learning, human-technology teamwork, and building the San Diego design community.

Want to learn more? Watch the full seminar below.

[embed]https://youtu.be/L9xZdQUwMs0[/embed]

Dr. Norman is professor emeritus of both psychology and cognitive science. He has been a VP of Apple, executive at HP, and design professor at Northwestern and KAIST (Korea). He is co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, an IDEO Fellow, fellow of the Design Research Society, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His books include Emotional Design, Living with Complexity, and most recently an expanded and revised edition of Design of Everyday Things.

“I once wrote an article saying design thinking is a silly myth, but useful. And I’ve now come to believe actually it is truly useful. What is it that we do in design thinking? First of all, we make sure we are solving the right problem. Engineers, MBAs are all taught, when they go to school, how to solve problems. And they’re really good at solving the problem. But they never step back and ask whether that was the right problem to solve. And what we do, is we first try to figure out what the real issue is.”
– Don Norman, on what sets designers apart.