At 85, the legendary designer and author of The Design of Everyday Things is on a mission to rethink out-of-touch design schools. Just don’t call it a swan song.
Don Norman, the godfather of UX, is holding up his phone on Zoom. “It’s a Google Pixel,” he says, “but it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same.” He explains that if you add less than an inch, you could put in a bigger battery. A little more than that, and you’d make that battery replaceable. But smartphones weren’t meant to last. And like myriad other things we use in our daily lives—our cars, our clothes, the fridge, even our lightbulbs—this is by design.
