Don Norman has led a complex life, but he is most proud of his work as an educator. Today he focusses upon his charity providing design awards to early career practitioners who are doing humanity-centered design and to educational groups that train them, with an annual summit where practitioners and educator share their experiences and learnings. His goal is to promote humanity-centered design across the world, as discussed in his book “Design for a Better World.”

At the University of California, San Diego he has been a Distinguished Professor (emeritus), Founder and first Director of the Design Lab, co-founder and first chair of the Cognitive Science Department and chair of the Psychology Department. In his time in industry, he has been a Vice President of Advanced Technology at Apple, an executive at HP, and co-founder and principal of the Nielsen Norman group. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cognitive Science Society, ACM, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Design Research Society.

He has served on numerous company boards, has honorary degrees from Delft, Padua, and San Marino, the lifetime achievement award from ACM’s Computer-Human Interaction group, and the President’s lifetime achievement award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He has received the Sir Misha Black Medal for distinguished service to design education from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1821, London, UK, the Design Guru Award from The Institute of Design, JK Lakshmipat University, Jaipur India. He is currently an advisor to Tongji University (Shanghai), and FLAME University’s Design program (Pune, India), The Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani, India), and the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytech.. He was a distinguished visiting professor at the Korean Advanced Institute of Technology (KAIST) for three years.

He has published 21 books translated into over 20 languages including Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things. His latest book, published in 2023, is “Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered.”  

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