A Conversation with Don Norman & Jon Kolko

Just brilliant conversation with Don Norman and Jon Kolko at the Academy of Art University (San Francisco). Двухчасовое видео, которое я очень рекомендую посмотреть. Engaging, thoughtful, rich, and delightful. Отдельное удовольствие — смотреть, как они аккуратно и элегантно подкалывают друг друга.

Don: Usability is important, but it is not the most important thing. There are lots of parts of (the iPhone) that are completely unusable, and you know what? It doesn't matter. You can have negative components, and you can have things that are difficult or aren't yet well-finished or well-developed. As long as the total experience is wonderful and your memory is wonderful — that is what matters.

Это к разговору о «провале» Jawbone UP. Up формирует привычку (в отличие от FitBit), — браслет регулярно напоминает о себе, о том, что сейчас можно подняться по лестнице, а не на лифте и т.д. И это самое главное. Интерфейсы ребята улучшат (я верю), а ежеминутная синхронизация вряд ли так уж необходима.

Don: Google doesn't understand people, they don't care about people. What is Google's product? The product is not search; the product is not advertising. The product is you. They are selling you to their advertisers. Their customers are the advertisers, and their product is you. So they don't care if their products work very well.

Привет, Minority Report. То, что сегодня делают Google и Amazon, очень скоро будут делать все, и рекламный баннер в магазине Gap будет помнить о том, какого цвета трусы вы купили в прошлом месяце, и спрашивать: «How'd those assorted tank tops work out for you?». Любой разговор о privacy в этом контексте можно заменить цитатами из Accelerando Чарльза Стросса.

Don: I've seen too many designers who think they know the answers to the problems of education or the problems of health or poverty or drinking water in Africa — it is amazing how many times design students in America are solving the problems of Africa or southern Asia as opposed to the real problems we have in the United States. If you a trying to solve problems in far-away places, you are fooling yourselves if you think you understand the problems.

Jon: But that can't be true if you are talking about affecting the homeless population in San Francisco, because once you form a repoire with someone, if the project ends, you still have that repoire with someone, because they are a real person.

И, конечно, Jon говорил об эмпатии, о работе над теми проектами, которые близки, о design for social impact.

Don: You have to be true to yourself. Whether you are working as a lone designer designing chairs, or whether you're working as one of several hundred people on a team trying to (solve) some complex sustainability problem..., you have to be true to yourself. Even if you're one voice of many. If everyone had this view, your one voice gets amplified.

Jon: It is the best time in history to be a (good) designer, by any metric.

Don: It is a great time to be a designer, because the technology world is changing rapidly in exciting ways which gives all sorts of wondeful potential. ...it is quite often that when there are economic difficulties, the exciting ideas get started.
Don't try to be the great name designer. The total number of great name designers will always be just a handful. We need a great many designers; we don't need star designers. A star designer is a nuisance rather than a virtue.

Thanks to Richard Anderson for the video and the transcription.