Erica Tanamachi

March 8, 2016

From the Quantified Self Public Health Symposium

The cognitive scientist Don Norman is one of the world’s most influential design theorists. His best-selling book, The Design of Everyday Things, has been in print for twenty-five years and is widely recognized as a classic. He is currently the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego.

Here he talks with Susannah Fox, who was at the time of their conversation an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (Today Susannah is the CTO at the US Department of Health And Human Services.) Susannah begins by asking Don about his idea that the first job of design is the solve the right problem. How do you know the problem you’ve chosen is the right one?

“In Human-Centered Design,” Don answers, “when we’re asked to solve the problem the rule is no, don’t solve the problem. Ask, why is that the problem? Why do you need this? What is this problem about?”

Watch Susannah and Don’s talk on Medium.