The Rise of Design

A very interesting piece on CBC radio tonight with Nora Young. Talking about design, and how badly it is done by so many companies. The most egregious example of this is the American car industry - 30 years of boring designs - no wonder the big 4 are struggling. For the last few years, the only thing that has saved them are the dubious gas guzzling SUVs.

She mentioned a couple of books by Donald Norman - "The Design of Everyday Things" - a book I love, and "Emotional Design". While googling on this topic, I came across this interesting site:

http://www.jnd.org/books.html

Has more information on Norman's work but also many other works on good design.

So why is this relevant to eLearning? Yes, it's tangential I agree...but good design principles should also be applied to our software and hardware. I have found that thinking of the principles espoused in Norman's books have given me a better appreciation for well designed software interfaces.