Technology Design: We're Doing It Wrong

Don Norman wears several hats, including that of an author, university professor and former Apple vice-president. Most importantly, though, he is a guru of user-friendly design and usability. In a recent opinion piece published by Fast Company, he adroitly demonstrates how putting people at the centre of design is now as fundamental – or even more so – as when he first coined the term User-Centered-Design in the mid-1980's. 

In this 5-minute read, Norman offers a sharp, scathing and uncompromising critique of a 'technology first' approach to device development, where people are forced to do tedious, repetitive tasks just because machines cannot do them. Instead, he advocates putting the user in the spotlight.

"We must change our mind-set from being technology-centric to become people-centric. Instead of starting with the technology and attempting to make it easy to understand and use, let us take human capabilities, and use the technology to expand our abilities. We need to return to one of the core properties of human-centered design: solve the fundamental issues in people’s lives," writes Norman.

What caught my attention the most was Norman's take on human error. As of now, the technology we use requires us to behave like machines, and when something goes wrong, we get all the blame. While not completely preventable, the author thinks that human errors can be managed by better design that would be more in line with human nature. 

This yields an interesting argument for the ongoing discussion on driverless cars, where one of the biggest selling points used to garner support is that self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers. But what if the real culprit is poor design? What if instead of eliminating human labour altogether, we "start with people’s abilities and create technology that enhances people’s capabilities,” as Norman puts it?