Notes from dConstruct 2011 – Don Norman

I recently attended the dConstruct 2011 conference and the highlight of the day, in addition to Don Norman signing my book was his talk.

Here are my notes:

- today is an exciting time for our industry, we constantly have a wave of new consumer electronics available

- without standards, user interaction with these new electronics will be inconsistent and disjointed

- as an industry we carefully need to consider the most simplistic of interaction methods (for instance gestures) to ensure users receive a consistent experience across all new devices

- we need to design systems that consider the whole user journey and not just an app that offers a one-dimensional benefit

- Apple and Amazon with iTunes and the Kindle respectively both offer a service

- We need to design for memory, not just the experience. The experience only lasts for the duration of the interaction, memories last for years

- Successful systems can still offer a good memory even when providing a bad experience. Disney Land provides a bad experience in the form of cueing, however the memories are fantastic and we would all go back

- Application niceties that offer no physical benefit can still enhance the user experience. The end of the browser page in Safari for iPhone has a nice bounce. Majority of competitors do not do this, if they do it will not be as fluent. Is this important? Probably not but gradually these experiences combined improve the experience which provide a greater memory