122 Quotes by Donald A. Norman

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.

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

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

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.

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

Creeping featurism is the tendency to add to the number of features of a product, often extending the number beyond all reason. There is no way that a product can remain usable and understandable by the time it has all of those special-purpose features that have been added in over time.

You won’t catch me giving clear lectures.

How do you discover a need that nobody yet knows about? This is where the product breakthroughs come through.

The major problems facing the development of products that are safer, less prone to error, and easier to use and understand are not technological: they are social and organizational.