Review: a day with Don Norman

Sourcegroup: Anne-Marije, Tom, Hanna, Chester & José
Location: Designhuis, Eindhoven
Who: Don Norman
What: lecture sociable design
When: 20 November 2008, 12pm

As we were in charge of guiding this day, we started of with meeting Professor Don Norman. Although his picture showed us a friendly, social man, the first moments were quiet awkward. We were busy arranging the setting and he was guided through the Designhuis and preparing for lunch.

At two o'clock people started entering the Designhuis. Quickly the 70 placed chairs were occupied, while the rest of the 430 people started looking for a good spot. This was more than we expected, but for Mister Norman nothing new.

The introduction by Kees Overbeeke was absolutely not in place, he did not add anything to the day. Luckily Mister Norman took over the mic and set the tone for his lecture. Talking about sociable design, he sounded as he was doing this for the million times. The content of the lecture was really interesting and he had nice examples. Unfortunately the interaction with the audience about the subject was forced. Was this because of the unexpected high number of listeners or because of mister Normans well prepared footnotes?

The amount of people also had an impact on the "questions and answers". Only one question was asked and after the lecture people lined up to ask their question in person. Those questions could really add some value to the lecture. Mister Norman was very patience and took the time to answer all the questions. This leaded to a delay in our schedule and therefore we did not have the opportunity to interview him.

We took him back to the academy and on the way he opened up. We saw him observing street situations and he shared his personal vision on the Dutch street policy. During de guided tour in the academy we also shared our positive and negative thoughts about the Design Academy. This was appreciated by Mister Norman who, we assume, is always guided by high positioned persons. At the point that the personal contact was established, it was time for him to go to Amsterdam.