Don Norman on design leadership and changing the world

A few weeks ago, Don Norman – design legend and pioneer of UX – came to teach at our Design Leaders programme at Future London Academy.

Don Norman is the author of "The Design of Everyday Things" and twenty other influential books, a co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and the person who coined the term "User Experience." He's also a provocative thinker who has successfully retired five times, each time reinventing himself - from cognitive scientist to Apple's Vice President to a champion for humanity-centered design.

And we are excited to share our conversation where he tells stories on how he become Apple's VP and coined the term "User Experience", as well as his thoughts on how AI will transform design, and why he's "only 89" and still changing the world.

Grab a cup of tea and settle in, this conversation might change everything you do from now on.

You can also watch or listen to the full episode via Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

While the full interview is a must-watch, here are the highlights we loved most and still talk about:

Future London Academy: Why designers must understand business to create real impact?

'If you want to be an academic, you don't have to. If you want to publish papers, you don't have to. If you want to do wonderful designs, you don't need to. But if you want somebody to pay attention to your design, and actually bring it out into the world... you better understand how it's going to fit into what already exists. So many designers complain to me, "What do you do when you have the perfect design and then the marketing people ruin it? Or the manufacturing people ruin it?" And I say, well, were they part of your design team? Maybe in fact what you built was perfect from your point of view, but didn't meet their needs.'

Future London Academy: How to become a Chief Design Officer

Don: 'If you want to become an executive, you have to switch from your special knowledge about the field and try to instead say, what's good for the company? What can I offer the company? What can I tell a company that will help improve their efficiency, improve their bottom line, either lower costs or increase profits, increase margin, increase all the things that people care about in the company... You have to demonstrate that you're doing something for the company. The way you convince them is not to go and tell the people what is wrong with the company. What they want you to do is come and tell them the solution.'

Future London Academy: You've spoken about designers needing multidisciplinary knowledge to drive change.​ How can designers learn it all?

'Don't hire people who are just like you. We need people who have different training and different backgrounds, different histories. People talk about diversity, but they often just emphasise that people will think differently and that's more creative, and that's true. But the other reason for diversity is you need different skills.'

We'd love to hear: Which of these insights resonates most with your leadership journey? Share your thoughts and tag @FutureLondonAcademy - let's keep this conversation going!

Want to learn directly from industry leaders and transform your leadership approach?

Join our Design Leaders Programme to gain hands-on experience and insights from the brightest minds in design.