Donald Norman - Cognitive Engineering Career

Cognitive Engineering Career

Norman made the transition from cognitive science to cognitive engineering by entering the field as a consultant and writer. The article "The Trouble with Unix" in Datamation catapulted him to a position of prominence in the computer world. Soon after, his career took off outside of academia, although he still remained active at UCSD until 1993. Norman continued his work to further human centered design by serving on numerous University and Government advisory boards such as with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He currently serves on numerous committees and advisory boards like at Motorola, the Toyota Information Technology Center, TED Conference, Panasonic, Encyclopædia Britannica and many more.

Norman published several important books during his time at UCSD, one of which, User Centered System Design, obliquely referred to the university in the initials of its title.

In 1995, Norman left UCSD to join Apple Computer, initially as an Apple Fellow as a User Experience Architect (The first to use the phrase User Experience in a title), and then as the Vice President of the Advanced Technology Group. He later worked for Hewlett-Packard before joining with Jakob Nielsen to form the Nielsen Norman Group in 1998. He returned to academia as a professor of computer science at Northwestern University where he is co-Director of the Segal Design Institute.

Norman has received many awards for his work. He received an honorary degree from the University of Padua in Padua, Italy. In 2001 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and in 2006 received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.

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