Design for the 21st Century with Don Norman

Brief

This course blew my mind. Taught by the legendary Don Norman, the man who coined user experience, this course walked through how to prepare ourselves as designers in the 21st Century. And the skills required are not exactly the old make it look pretty type of skillsets. Design is not just aesthetics and function. It’s about orchestrating people and embedding ourselves to work beside them. All for understanding their context, which involves working in environments with high sociotechnical complexity. And it requires patience to wait for results that take many years to manifest.

Techniques Learned

Don provided a wealth of knowledge in this course. Among the topics and techniques explored were:

• How designers can improve the world
• How to use human-centered design to solve global challenges
• Why we evolved from user-centered design to people-centered design
• Why designers are so special (how we think with people)
• How to democratize design
• The difference between wicked problems and complex socio-technical systems
• How to apply human-centered design insights and processes to solve complex global problems
• How to focus on people when you solve complex global challenges
• What feedback loops are and why they are so important

Applying Knowledge

Of all the topics and examples, I couldn’t help but recollect on how our work at the Do-ference with 400-pound Baby echoed the things Don recommended.

Thinking Futures

Focusing on people is the backbone of our design arguments. This is why personas, journey maps, experience maps, and stakeholder maps are so important to design process. And stakeholder diagrams help, too. Because designing FOR people involves designing WITH people.