Design for a Better World

How human behavior brought our world to the brink, and how human behavior can save us.

The world is a mess. Our dire predicament, from collapsing social structures to the climate crisis, has been millennia in the making and can be traced back to the erroneous belief that the earth's resources are infinite. The key to change, says Don Norman, is human behavior, covered in the book's three major themes: meaning, sustainability, and humanity-centeredness. Emphasize quality of life, not monetary rewards; restructure how we live to better protect the environment; and focus on all of humanity. Design for a Better World presents an eye-opening diagnosis of where we've gone wrong and a clear prescription for making things better.

Norman proposes a new way of thinking, one that recognizes our place in a complex global system where even simple behaviors affect the entire world. He identifies the economic metrics that contribute to the harmful effects of commerce and manufacturing and proposes a recalibration of what we consider important in life. His experience as both a scientist and business executive gives him the perspective to show how to make these changes while maintaining a thriving economy. Let the change begin with this book before it's too late.

PART I Artificial

1 Almost everything artificial has been designed

2 Our artificial way of life is unsustainable

3 Why History matters

4 Precise -but artificial- measurements

5 If technology got us into today's situation, maybe technology can get us out

6 This book: Meaningful, sustainable, and humanity-centered

PART II Meaningful

7 The need for meaning

8 Measurement in the physical sciences

9 Measuring what is important to people

10 The Gross Domestic Product

11 How did the world get into today's quandary

12 Human behavior and economics

PART III Sustainable. Reverse and repair the harm done to the ecosystems of the world.

14 How did the world get into today's quandary?

15 Sustainability has multiple components and implications

16 Design Products, Sustainability, and the Circular Economy

17 The practical difficulties of Implementing Circular Design

18 Sustainable, robust, and resilient Systems

19 People's understanding of systems

20 Working with complex sociotechnical systems

21 It's not too late

PART IV Humanity Centered

22 Moving from humans to humanity

23 Democratizing design and development

24 People designing for themselves

25 DesignX: An approach to large, complex systems

26 Where incrementalism (muddling through) fails

27 Incremental modular design

28 When large, multidisciplinary projects are necessary

29 Dealing with scale

30 Design: Necessary but not sufficient

PART V Human Behavior

31 Why change is difficult

32 People will mobilize for a common goal

33 What must change

34 The dominance of technology

35 The future of technology

PART VI Action

36 What can be done?

37 What can we do?

38 The major points of this book

Acknowledgments

Notes