Don Norman

Don Norman, born in 1935, is an American researcher, professor and author, best known for his books on design, especially The Design of Everyday Things, and widely regarded for his expertise in design, usability engineering and cognitive science. He studied electrical engineering at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania and took a PhD in psychology at Pennsylvania as one of the earliest graduates of its Mathematical Psychology group, under the advisor Duncan Luce. After a fellowship at the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies he joined the University of California, San Diego, where he became founding chair of the Department of Cognitive Science and a founder of the Institute for Cognitive Science. With Tim Shallice he proposed the Norman-Shallice model of attentional control, and he later co-founded the Nielsen Norman Group and advocated user-centered design.