| To blindly give your faith to someone because of who they are? Which well known products is he credited with helping designing? There's none listed on his wiki page. Wiki does say 'The Norman Group's list of clients spans from Hertz all the way to Microsoft'. Microsoft? Those well know UX masters? Oh dear. They are a damn sight better than some, but still way behind in true usability. And of course there's the elephant in the room, the iPod. Which does exactly the opposite of what he claims. And there are some howlers in the article. Like when he 'bets' the $250 toaster sells well. Bets? Does he not know marketing 101? It's there to make the overpriced medium range toasters look cheap. It's not there to sell. The sad fact is that UX design is still a new field and as such it's in its quackery stage. That means there's a lot of people saying things they think is true because of raindance/cargocult effects. And people will say they are amazing when they're not because they occasionally hit home runs. Consider what the real reasons the expensive ones are more desirable than the cheap ones may be. Maybe it's because they look cheap and shit in the first place. It's very easy to mix everything up. The iPod and iPhone have very few buttons but they look expensive. They exude status. And they sell well with simplicity. And unfortuantely for our stress levels the Apples and 37signals of this world are few and far between. Now Don Norman, I don't know. He may be amazing, he may be not. But I can't agree with this article, but mainly because I'm now tired of badly designed tech gear. Perhaps when he was writing this in 2006 that overcomplication fatigue hadn't started sinking into society. But note the legions of adoring fans the Apples and 37signals have created. That's worth its weight in gold. |
Read my comment again. I never blindly gave him faith. I was pointing out that he's a well-known expert in this field, which is relevant when evaluating the substance of his argument.