Don Norman

Don Norman

Beautiful is better. More beautiful is best. This is particularly true if you need to conceal a poverty of design. I wonder how many designers have already embedded this idea into their conceptual thinking. “If it doesn’t work too well,that's OK, I’ll just make it blindingly attractive.” I don’t think Don is telling us anything we don’t already know... if only on an intuitive level. However beauty is mercurial. It often changes with time.
Is Don Norman's mantra simply the designer's ace up the sleeve. The party trick to wow the kids (clients). I should have thought it entirely self evident that beauty deflects a certain level of immediate critical thinking. One is first awed by beauty whether by that of a man or a woman, by a monumental piece of machinery or the smallest atomic particle. For example, the snowflake. It has an astonishingly complex and beautiful crystalline form. It has a texture of infinite mystery, ephemeral, here one moment gone the next. It flutters down quietly, settles on the ground and looks spectacularly beautiful. Is there anyone who's first reaction to a snow flake is... this thing is a killer? Usual critical thinking has been suspended simply because one has been seduced by beauty. If snow fell out of the sky filthy, black and noisy would we have the same reaction to it?
I don't agree with Don Norman when he suggests things work better when they are beautifully designed. However, I do agree that things appear to work better when they are beautifully designed. He has cleverly harnessed his theory to the nature of human conditioning i.e. we like, we actually prefer, things that look good. The point here is we are (conditioned)taught what looks good. And who teaches us this? the gurus of design and who are they …. ho ho ho the designers!!!.... So in a way Don Norman is his own self for filling prophesy. First I'll tell you what is beautiful, second, I'll design it for you and, third, you will love it because I have made it beautiful for you. This is very evident in Fashion/clothing design; what is initially a bizarre or even seemingly ridiculous style is introduced to us by the fashion houses/designers, it is then reviewed and hyped in the media by the denizons of fashion. Slowly we become less critical, (taught/conditioned/educated about the product) more accepting and finally' we love it, culminating in total surrender (acceptance as a thing of beauty) we wear it. Yesterday we were ignorant of it's beauty today we have been educated as to it's line, form and brilliance of concept etc.
Yes, beauty is good... beauty is desirable but we all knew that anyway Don! (as does the marketing dept... ) sadly, the idea of beauty... something to do with purity... has been distorted and drowned out by the noise and irresistible glitz of the of the marketing machine.