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Podcast of Kent and Don Norman

12 May 2026

Shared to me by Samaksh Grover.

• Books:
  • Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered (2023)
  • The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman (1988)
• Wikipedia
• Podcast on Spotify, Podcast on YouTube, On Kent’s Website
  • Some Quotes from the podcast:
    • If you’re not failing that means you’re not trying hard enough.
    • A scientist never fails. Say when they are working on something for 2-3 years and they do not succeed they do not say “I failed” but they say “But I learned a lot.”.
    • Designing great products still haven’t changed, the same fundamentals still apply.
    • ChatGPT: The term “Norman door” comes from Don Norman, and it’s discussed in his book The Design of Everyday Things. A “Norman door” is basically a badly designed door that gives the wrong cues — like a pull handle on a door you’re supposed to push. The idea became popular through Norman’s writing and talks on human-centered design.
    • If I tell you that computers will be 1000 times more powerful than today, and ask you what does that mean you could do? And the answer is that you won’t have any idea.
    • If it fails, you do something else and eventually you hit the jackpot.
    • A lot of my good friends who have done successful things will tell me how they made 5 or 6 failures first.
    • Kent: You just have not to be afraid of failing.
    • Don: Don’t call it failing, call it a learning experience.
    • You love your work. But if you want to put impact to the world you gotta stop loving it.
    • Takes away from what they care about. Not everybody should do that and we need someone in every field to do that because then people listen to you as you move up the ranks. (52:23)
    • The world is a complex place, it’s made up of people.
    • Independent modules.
    • AI is not taking job, it’s the bad economic time happening today. AI might take over some jobs some day but it’s not happening today.
    • Personality Issues: ChatGPT
    • Technologically has dramatically improved in his time too.

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