Don Norman - Invented the term "User Experience". | B4F #38

Don Norman is one of the quiet but decisive figures that explain why today we open a door, use a mobile phone, or browse a web page without thinking too much about "how" things are used. In this episode of Brands 4 Future, we explore his life and connect it with a key aspect: human-centered design as a driver of innovation, business, and social change.

From Electronics to Experience Design

The episode begins during the Great Depression, with a boy who constantly changes cities and learns to observe the world as a "permanent outsider." This critical perspective on the everyday becomes the thread that runs through his career: first as an electrical engineer fascinated by electronics and the early computers, and later as a psychologist obsessed with how we perceive, remember, and make mistakes.

At Harvard and California universities, Norman found himself at the epicenter of the cognitive revolution, questioning the dominant behaviorism and advocating for the study of complex mental processes such as memory and attention. This shift in focus—from the machine to the brain—allowed him to do something radical for his time: apply psychology to the design of complex systems, such as a nuclear power plant, and arrive at a conclusion that remains valid for any good user experience (UX) project today: when a system fails, the blame is almost never on the user, but on the design.

The Birth of the "Norman Doors" and a Discipline

His experience in Cambridge, stumbling across poorly designed doors, taps, and switches, culminated in The Design of Everyday Things, the book that turned the everyday into a manifesto for good design. From there, the concept of "Norman doors" was born: those doors that we don’t know whether to push or pull, which highlight that the problem is not the person, but poorly designed signals. Norman introduces concepts like "affordances" and "signifiers," which are basic today in user experience (UX), to explain how objects should "tell us" how they are used.

This approach directly aligns with branding, web design, and digital marketing work: a brand is not just seen, it is experienced. Every friction—a confusing button, a broken purchase flow, ambiguous navigation—is, in Norman's terms, a design failure, not that of "a clumsy user."

Apple, the Invention of User Experience and Consulting

When Norman joined Apple in 1993 as Apple Fellow, he created the User Experience office and became the first professional with "user experience" in his title. His goal was for user experience to have the same weight as marketing and engineering in product development. That vision, which today seems obvious, was revolutionary, as experience ceased to be just a final finish to become a strategic dimension from the beginning.

After his time at Apple, Norman co-founded Nielsen Norman Group with Jakob Nielsen, a world-leading consultancy in user experience research and strategy that sets standards, publishes reports, and trains thousands of professionals. This is exactly the point of connection: understanding design not just as an aesthetic issue but as a discipline based on evidence, user research, and strategic decision-making that impacts business metrics.

From Usability to Designing a Better World

Norman is also aware of his own limitations. In Emotional Design, he broadens his perspective and focuses on how products evoke emotions, demonstrating that beauty and pleasure are as important as functionality. In Design for a Better World, he takes a step further and argues that design, as it has been practiced until now, has inadvertently contributed to the climate crisis and inequality. Therefore, he proposes shifting from optimizing for the individual to designing for society, the planet, and all forms of life.

It is an invitation to brands to take on a more ambitious role and consider each identity, every website, and every campaign from the user experience perspective and, at the same time, from their impact on people and the environment. At its core, following Don Norman's legacy means understanding that good design is not an aesthetic luxury, but a strategic responsibility.