Designing the Future of Societal Good with Don Norman

The original notion was my friend said, let's make an award to some famous designer who's done really good work. And I said, no. I said, when you're well known and famous, an award doesn't mean anything. It's nice, but it doesn't change what you're doing. So let's give it to somebody who's just starting out because there an award can change their life.

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And welcome back to the Tacos in Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom and I am so thrilled to have on my guest today, Mr. Don Norman. Don revolutionized the field of design by emphasizing human centered and user friendly principles, particularly through his foundation work on usability and cognitive ergonomics. His influential book, the Design of Everyday Things redefined how designers think about interactions, focusing on intuitive, accessible and empathetic design. Dawn's contributions have shaped the evolution of user experience and have set enduring standards in both technology and product design, impacting countless industries and products. And we're going to hear so much more about his path and what he's doing now. So, Don, thank you for joining the podcast.

Thank you.

It is a pleasure to have you here. We have interacted in the San Diego community. I know the San Diego community has greatly benefited from your teachings, your mentorship, and your leadership of spinning up a number of resources and global efforts that we've been fortunate to have the headquarters here in San Diego. So we want to know, you know, how did that all come to be? Where did it all start for you? Where are you from originally?

Well, I have a bizarre and accidental history. I tell people everything that happened in my life was not planned and it was a bunch of accidents. Something interesting happened or something that I wanted to do wasn't possible. And another interesting thing happened, and I said, why not? So, for example, I started as an electrical engineer. I went to mit, was your typical technology nerd, thought that people got in the way. We shouldn't. If it wasn't for people, my stuff would work much better. But I wanted to do computers, and I graduated MIT in 1957. So there weren't many places that had computers at that point. And so I went to the University of Pennsylvania for a master's degree, which is where the first computers in the United States have been built, maybe in the world, but the people weren't there anymore. They'd left, started company, them Magic Brain, Univac. But so I got a master's degree in electrical engineering and didn't know what to do then. And suddenly the department of psychology had a new head who was a physicist. He gave a talk to the engineering department, and I said, well, that's interesting. Maybe instead of building a smart machine, I'll think I'll study one. And I went to him and he said, you don't know anything at all about psychology. Wonderful. And so I joined the psychology department, got my PhD in two years. I think I failed all of the basic psychology courses, but I was allowed to teach a whole bunch of others. And because I hated psychology, psychology was dull. It was all these experiments and behaviorism and you had to memorize it all. There wasn't any system to it. So what I did was I tried to apply my engineering background to psychology, and which is why I was teaching these other course, some of the courses. And I got my first job at. In those days, your advisor says, where do you want to go? And so I ended up with my first job at Harvard. And when I introduced. And when I entered Harvard and was introduced to the faculty there, the most famous psychologist of the 20th century B.F. skinner stood up and denounced me in my field. I thought that was a compliment. And what happened, though, as I was at Harvard for a few years in the new university at San Diego opened up and I got offered a job here and seemed, why not? Why not? It was pretty exciting because what this campus did was really unusual. You could never do it again. They started with Nobel Prize winners and then very senior professors and graduate students, postdoctoral students, and then graduate students. And then someplace around there they hired people like me who was in middle level. And they actually made a mistake in hiring me. They told me later that they thought I was much more senior than I really was. So I actually got tenure. So I've never been an assistant professor because at Harvard I was a lecturer. Anyway, this new department, there's no school at San Diego, opened up and I accepted a job there in 1966. No one had yet graduated. And so it was the second year of the psychology department. Three people had started it first, and I came in in the second wave. But I started something called Human Information Processing Psychology and wrote a textbook on that which really was trying to make sense out of psychology and say, look, there are fundamental principles, and we learn those. You don't have to memorize everything. And the book actually was very successful among professors who thought it was too difficult for the students. They had it backwards. The students loved it. It was too difficult for the professors. And anyway, that was the beginning. But after a while I said, you know, psychology is too narrow. And so I wanted to bring in computer science. And I was already publishing in the AI literature of those days. And I wanted to bring in neuroscience, and I wanted linguistics, and I wanted social sciences like anthropology and sociology. And so the timing was just right. And so I was able to start a new department, Cognitive Science Department. And at that time, the UCSD was growing rapidly, which made it easy. And the chancellor at UCSD was Dick Atkinson at the time, who I had known since I was a graduate student. And he was just starting his career. So he was a great supporter. And he only had one requirement, is that he had to be allowed to be a member of the faculty. And so we started Cognitive Science. But there's an interesting story that just happened is that when we first started the Cognitive science group, we had a Sloan foundation fellowship. We hired new PhDs and my colleague Dave Rumhart and I were teaching these new PhDs about the work we were doing so they could take part. And I was talking about perceptrons. You don't have to know what that is. But one of them said, you're wrong. And I love it when people tell me I'm wrong because if I'm wrong I want to know and if I'm not wrong, well, maybe I'm not talking about it. Well. But anyway, he came up to the board and explained what was going on in Europe. He had come from England and in fact he couldn't get a job in England because he was very strange to the English. We thought he was wonderful. But what happened is I went off and helped start the field of human computer interaction. That's what I was working on. But Dave Rumahart worked with this new person and a couple weeks ago this new person got the Nobel Prize for neural networks. And amazing. Jeff Hinton. And yeah, he was smart and great and wonderful. So I've been also. We've been following and working a little bit in neural networks ever since. That's for 20, 30, 40 years, a long time.

And Jeff was at UCSD at the time when you were working with him?

Yeah, he was a postdoc at UCSD.

And actually ended up at Google. Right.

And then he started the company and Google bought it and he ended up at Google and he's now quit because he doesn't like he says, oh, I would made a horrible error in doing all this. This is a massive device that may actually destroy world. I think he's overdoing it personally, but he's very smart so you have to take him seriously. And so he said, Google has treated me well. They don't have any constraints in what I can talk about, but I'd feel more comfortable. I were not in a large company, but what happened after that was I got more and more interested in what was happening in industry and particularly at Apple because Apple had devised. Well, let me step back a bit. I had spent a sabbatical in England where I couldn't work the doors, I couldn't work the water faucets, I couldn't work the lights. And I didn't plan to do this, but at the end of my sabbatical I sat down and wrote a book called the Psychology of Everyday Things, which today is called the Design of Everyday Things. And that got me really interested in what was going on in industry. And so especially I was consulting for Apple and I was consulting for Xerox, Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox parc. And they at Xerox they were developing some wonderful new computers that didn't require commands. Everything you needed was you just pull down a menu and oh yeah, you didn't need a manual. It was easy to use. It was very powerful. What you saw on the screen is what would happen when you printed it. And they had special printers. They had invented the laser printer. They invented the language that sends the symbols to the laser printer so it looks like what's on the screen. They had done all this wonderful stuff, but nobody knew what to do with it because the research unit was in California and the headquarters was in New York. And there was a big gulf between them. So I took my first job at Apple, which was just building and releasing the Macintosh, the first one. And I discovered some of my students had helped develop some of the early software for the Macintosh. And I developed the Human Information, the Human interface guideline book for developers. And so I ended up at Apple. I took an early retirement in 1993 and was at Apple. I started as an Apple fellow, which meant I had no requirements, no responsibilities, but could do anything I wanted. But I also had no power. I had to convince people by my authority, by, you know, convincing them. But when a position opened up as vice president of the Advanced Technology Group, I said, hey, can I do that? And yes, I was became vice president. And that was wonderful because there's where I learned about. First of all, Apple was collapsing in those days. I tell people I was there between Jobs. I arrived just after Jobs left and worked with John Scully. And then I worked with a succession of following CEOs until Jobs bought the company. And it cost minus $400 million. That is to say Apple paid him. Apple thought they were buying his company. Steve thought he was buying Apple. But Steve started over again. And what I think he said to himself was, Apple is near bankruptcy. I don't know who are the good people, who are the bad people. I'm not going to think about it, not waste my time. I'll get rid of all of the executives and, and bring in my own people. So yes, he fired me, but he fired all vice presidents. It wasn't personal. And he saved Apple. No one else could have done that. He really renewed it. But that left me free again. So I went off and did various other things. Started a company, started, followed a startup to Chicago that didn't work. So I ended up teaching computer science and starting a design program in Chicago at Northwestern. Retired from that, came back, living in Palo Alto when Pradeep Khosla, the chancellor at UCSD, came to my home and asked if I would come back to San Diego and start a design lab. And I said, no, I'm happy. I Have too much to do, I'm busy, I don't need a job. He came back a second time, he came back a third time and what he said was, look, you can do anything you want. It only has two requirements. First, it has to be important. Second, it has to be exciting. So yeah, my wife and I love San Diego. She actually grew up in San Diego. So we came back.

Wow. I mean, it's not a hard choice. Living wise.

Compared to myself, we have no complaints. We've lived a great life. But now to go to the next step. I came back to San Diego to start a design program and I couldn't find any designers. And people I did find said, there are no designers in San Diego. But I kept finding designers and designers, designers and designers. But all of them said, there are no designers. I found thousands of them who all said, so what I did was an event that you went to. We decided to hold. We invented a new company called or organization, the Design Forward Alliance, a non profit. And we held this big event on the Broadway Pier downtown. They allowed us to use it without cost. And we invited the entire design community, but the entire people. We even had the mayor there and we had some visiting great designers there. And that started off. We said, we can't have a great design school unless we also have to have the community be a great community for designers. And that was the beginning. And the next thing. And then I'll shut up, is that we discovered that there was this program called the World Design Capital. In fact, I had been to the first one. The first World Design Capital was in Turin, Italy and I had been there. I had also was teaching in Korea at kaist, their technology institute, when Seoul, Korea became the World Design Capital. And so a friend of mine became vice mayor of Seoul in order to help bring together the activities. And I also visited Mexico City when Mexico City was the World Design Capital. So I knew a bit about it and I knew people at the World Design Organization. But it isn't easy to do that. We had to bring together a lot of people. And Malin Burnham decided that he would support us, but only if we brought Tijuana in because he's very interested in these cross border works. And so it took us seven years. But what we did is we put together a proposal. The World Design Organization said, you can't do that. We can't allow you to have two cities or especially in two countries. It's never been done. We did it anyway. We didn't do traditional design. We didn't show many Beautiful objects. We said no. We approach societal issues and these big problems like the problems on the border and there's poverty on both sides of the border and there's good, there's needs for sanitation and better health and better education and et cetera. And we won. Yeah.

Incredible. I think honestly, it felt like it elevated even the World Design Challenge because you took social, societal issues as opposed.

To now become standard.

Right. Which is pretty incredible. Do you think part of the. Some of the things you said, like even like the name of your book changed from psychology to design. Was it a lexicon that was just changing? Were people not using design out in.

Community, which was, oh, people still don't. People don't understand design. People think it's making something look pretty and it's. And I still like to tell people about the New York Times that had an obituary that said, we hardly need an obituary. Everybody knows this world famous designer, et cetera. I'd never heard of the person. He did fashion design. Well, it is a legitimate field, but it's so far removed from what I care about. And what I care about. Well, for example, I'm incapable of making anything that's attractive. Now I happen to know that making things attractive is very important. People. That's a big decision maker in when you're buying something. So. But what I tell my students is it's important to know what you're good at and what you're bad at. And if you're bad at it, and it's important, you better make sure you always work in a team where people who are good at it have it. Because it doesn't matter that no one person has all the skills, but the team you work in has to have all the required skills. And you also need marketing and finance and sales and all that in your team. And so I even wrote a book called Emotional Design that emphasizes why beauty is so important in people's lives. But I can't do it. But I know that I can't. And therefore I work with people. So in the end, you know what I really am in a designer? I did work at Apple helping design. I designed a couple of small things. I worked with some very big teams, guided a couple of big teams. But when people really ask me what kind of a designer I am, I say I'm an educator. And what I design is designers. So at this point, I have 21 books and they've been read by millions of people. And that's what I'm proud of.

I mean, there's a lot to to unpack from that, I, I look at your engineering background, which is problem based solutions, right? Looking at where the root of problems are and designing solutions of it. That even speaks to the design aspect and how you've done that at scale for designing solutions for humans.

Whether that was the difference is, the difference is not only the focus on people, which I call human centered design. I used to call human centered design. You'll ask me why I call it humanity centered design today, but they didn't. When you're an engineer, you want to solve the technical problems and you often don't build for a need. You build something because, hey, I figured out how to do this neat thing. And then you look around to see if there's a business opportunity for it and what we do in design. I say that engineers and business people are really good at solving problems, but they seldom ask is this the right problem? And the one difference is that designers say, no, no, I won't solve the problem you've asked me to solve. Let's see, what's the real problem underlying it? Because unless you solve that, the problem comes back. And so we try to look at people and find out where people are having difficulty. We don't ask them, we watch what they're doing. And I watch you and suddenly the lights went off right in the middle of this video. And so you had to stop and do so. I would come back and try to take a look at your setup and see why is that, and so on, and try to figure out how you could have the automation that you have built in, but without it doing things suddenly under its own volition, that is not what you intended. And so that's what we try to do. And it's human centered. It's all about people. So most other fields, they want to improve productivity or costs or keep to the SCH schedule, those are very important. But I think quality of life is even more important and we want to prioritize that. Keeping to the schedule, keeping to the budget.

Speaking of quality of life, like specific to San Diego, you've moved away and back a few times. Many people prioritize that locally, but it's equal route with working on things of importance or things of impact.

I feel like as well, well, that's what I decided to do. My books are famous for teaching people how to make things easy to use, easy to understand. And I won't go through all my retirements, but on my fifth retirement, after I had been, after seven years of my five year appointment to start the design lab, I said, it's time to step down. Or more accurately, my wife said, don, it's time for you to stop. Retire again. Stay at home, enjoy yourself. Well, I did retire again, but what am I going to do now? Well, I write books. But, you know, I'd like to write a book about the world today. And the world is filled with issues, so I'll write a book about the problems we're having. But I looked around and I said, these problems are well understood. I can't add anything. Well, I should write about the solutions. No, the solutions are well understood. The problem is they're not being done. Oh, that's human behavior. Now, maybe I can have a special insight into that because I'm an engineer. I understand technology. I'm a psychologist. I understand people. I was high executive at two different companies and started my own company. I understand business. I testified before the FCC to get the very first WI fi ban. I testified before the FCC actually for a whole year in order to get the high definition television standards. And I understand, therefore, how politics worked. I walked the halls of Congress. Talk to the. Not so much to the Congress people, but to their staffs who are far more important. Because if you're elected to Congress, you don't have any time to read everything and think. You rely heavily on your staff. And so that's what I did. I put together a book which is called Designed for a Better World. It has to be meaningful, sustainable and humanity centered. Now, what do I mean by humanity centered? Well, I like to hold this up and say, this is the design of everyday things. And it's been sold over a million copies and it's been used all over the world in many, many translations. And it's wrong. What's wrong about it? Nothing. There's nothing in there that's wrong. I believe in it and I still teach it. What's wrong is what's not in the book. And that's what I cover in this book, which is the result, the one I just mentioned, Design for a Better World. I didn't talk about how we destroy the environment and getting the materials to make a beautiful object. I didn't talk about how we destroy the environment to get the materials to make these beautiful objects or manufacture which pollutes the air, the land, the water. I didn't talk about the way digital products are really hurting various cultures, hurting children. The whole point about these digital projects is we really try to make them addictive. So you really do it and do it and do it more than you want to Actually, but you just can't tear yourself away. And there are lots of things that we didn't talk about and that's what we have to do. And so I said the earlier book was human, was Human Centered Design. This is the same principles, but expanded. We have to think about the whole system of the world and the side effects and the damage we are doing to all sorts of things. And so I call that HCD plus or Humanity Centered Design. And I've even started a charity to emphasize and reward people who are doing this.

Wow. Well, I think we're going to get to that in a second here because what I've seen is, you know, not just defining categories, you've expanded and kind of created brand new, I don't know, ways of thinking and almost entire industry, not industries, that's even the wrong word. But you know what?

One, one thing that's valuable, it's, there's some interesting. I keep changing disciplines all the time. I, I, I, I try to find a problem that I think is important and I don't know anything about, but I think I can maybe make some progress. And when I finally, so I, I go for years not understanding what I'm doing. I think my students always think I'm don't know what I'm talking about. And they're often right. But by the time I do understand it well, I then teach a course in which I, I write a little book and I use the manuscript to teach a course and refine the book better. And then, okay, the book's published. Now I'm going to forget that and go find some other area that I don't understand. But what this allows me to do is I bring in all my engineering background into the work I'm doing. I bring in my psychology background to the work I'm doing, I bring in my business background into the work I'm doing. And so I bring in the political background into the work I'm doing. So it gives me a fairly unique approach to these issues because I have all these different ways of thinking about it and realizing in today's world you can't just say, here's a solution. You have to make sure that it fits the kind of people you're aimed at, that it's actually doable, that it's affordable, that it's reliable, that it's easy to use, and that isn't destroying the world, but rather is helping to maintain and improve the world. So that's a big challenge. But I believe in big challenges and it's Difficult. But I also argue that every important problem is difficult or else it wouldn't still be a problem. True.

Is that some of the conversations you're already seeing happen at the World Design Challenge now that it's kind of expanded?

Yes. And I. But I've also seen it happening all over the world. I just spent three weeks in India where this is where I'm now advising three different new startup universities who are teaching differently. And I'm also. I went to a conference in Thailand. Well, this book is called Design for a Better World. Well, the conference was called Design for a Better World. Not a coincidence. They went to a conference in the Philippines where they called it Design Thinking and User Experience. Well, actually at Apple, I'm the one who introduced the term user experience into the field. And so I had gone to a conference in Singapore the year before. This was the same conference. They moved it to the Philippines. And I just got a. I was just asked yesterday if I would talk to the people from Indonesia because they're running the same conference in 2025 and would I be interested in going to Indonesia to talk to them. And so. And then I went to Mexico City where they had a conference called Humanity Centered Design. And then I went to Bend, Oregon for a conference on AI. And then I went back to Mexico to Monterey to talk to design schools about bringing all this new stuff into design. So it all fits together.

It's a global conversation, which gotta feel like you have elevated the conversation at a humanity level as you originally wrote and intended.

And I'm not the only one. And I'm proud of that. Because if you want to lead a revolution, which I do, you need revolutionaries, you need other people who are already thinking along these lines. But what happens, what's good about books? Once you write a book that fits what people are already starting to think, that book becomes pretty central and helps organize and lead things. And actually, what I'm trying to do at a big conference we're holding in about two weeks is to start an organization on humanity centered design that goes across the world. And not for academics especially, but rather for people who are actually doing it, actually solving some of the societal issues. But I'll also reward and encourage the academic institutions that are training these people.

Let's talk about that. The Don Norman Design Awards Summit, Global Summit, that's happening November 14th, 15th in San Diego. Correct?

Correct. Next year it will be at a different country, which I will announce on November 15th. So I won't tell you now, but it'll be west of Us.

Okay, got it. Take us through a little bit of what to expect through that conference, which I think coincides with World Design Challenge conference that's also happening, right?

Not coincides, follows.

Okay.

Because after all, I was part of the instigator of the World Design Capital project. And so I said, why don't we make this project that I'm doing be a part of the World Design Capital celebration. And so I promised that I would make we have an international set of jurors from 18 of them from around the world. But I promised I would have a set that comes from the Tijuana, San Diego region and that we would try to give prizes to people in San Diego Tijuana, except they all had to meet the quality requirements and we did. So the end result is we did give prizes to both universities in Mexico and also some of the projects going on in Mexico.

That's great. Can you take us through a little bit more of the awards and the summit itself?

Well, what we said was the original notion was my friend said, let's make an award to some famous designer who's done really good work. And I said no. I said, when you're well known and famous, an award doesn't mean anything. It's nice, but it doesn't change what you're doing. So let's give it to somebody who's just starting out because there an award can change their life. It really means they're onto something. And so we said, you have to be an early career doing something for societal good as defined by the United nations, which has a list of 16 different societal needs. It has a number 17 which is these problems are too big to be done alone. We have to gather together to solve them. And so in some sense my project, this charity, is doing number 17. And so they have to have some evidence and they have to submit say what they did and how they're doing it. And they have to follow the principles that I call humanity, Humanity center design. Not necessarily as stated by me, but they have to follow the spirit of what this is about. And we got a lot of really good, wonderful application. In fact, there were some applications that moved me so much that I just, I had to stop, I couldn't keep reading. And I said, this is what makes this all worthwhile because it's been a huge amount of work. It's been a full time job, full time volunteer job, but I think it's wonderful. And, and the, the institutions that are teaching are doing wonderful things and the people doing work. And because I Want this to be a learning experience. What we've done is two things. First, I wrote personal letters to every single applicant, especially the ones that we turn down. And I explained why and I said what they had to do to submit a better application. And then I urged them to come back when you're ready. And I got more thank you notes from those people than from the ones that we gave awards to because lots of contests, if you don't get something, you don't know why. The second thing we're doing is I brought in a couple of of major foundations like the Aga Khan foundation, which is based in, it's actually based in Geneva, but it works mostly in Africa and Asia. I went and visited them and they said they were doing human centered design across the world. And I said, that's wonderful. But when I looked at what they were doing, I said, no, you're not. You're doing humanity centered design across the world. So we banded together and said, let's try to see if we can make this happen across the world. And I found another group called Centro Trentidos in Tijuana and another group called Commit Global, which handles, they build infrastructure for countries that have infrastructure problems, usually at the borders with a heavy amount of immigration. And what they started doing solutions for each country. And they said, no, why don't we make a general generic solution that we can then give to each country, but they can tailor it to their particular needs and moreover, they will maintain it because they know the countries don't have enough skills or money to maintain it. So they maintain it. And they started off as a small thing, but now, for example, the Netherlands decided to fund a lot of their work. So they moved their headquarters to the Netherlands and they're working all around the world. They do a lot of work for the United nations, etc. So I want them to talk and I don't want them to say what wonderful things we've done. I want them to say, here's a really wonderful project and it didn't work. It failed. Because you learn from these failures. They're learning experience. And so first of all, I want the learnings to be propagated. And second of all, I want the beginning, early career people to realize that these very sophisticated, long lasting organizations, they fail too. So if you fail, don't give up, don't say, oh, I'm no good at this, but think hard about why and what the reasons were and see how you might overcome them. And we're going to put together a database of all These stories so that you can look there and you can maybe learn and you can find projects similar to what you've done in other places and maybe learn from them. Usually a project done at one place doesn't work directly in the new place, but it gives you ideas. But you have to, you have to change it to be appropriate for the culture and the people. And so we're actually building an AI system to do that. But it's done. It's a fairly standard system now, by the way, is that you take these AIs that are trained on the world's knowledge, but what you can do is you can add your knowledge. I've added all my books, well, a number of my books and papers and videos and the website for our, for our charity. And so the way it works is it first looks at those things and uses those data to find the answer to the question that people ask. And it's pretty effective.

Incredible. Wow, what a. I mean, big effort to go in while you're in retirement.

If I wasn't busy, I don't know what I would do. I would, I don't know, die. Lots of retirement people that they look forward to retirement and it's wonderful for the first six months and then they wither away because there's nothing for them. Nothing. No, nothing. And no goal in their life. I have goals.

Busy and active is absolutely. We can tell. You can. You're vibrant and you have. So it seems like just getting started to a certain regard.

I'm just getting started. I'm only 88, so I still have another decade.

Right, Exactly. We're just coming off Santa's Startup Week 2024, where Irwin Jacobs was the keynote in his 90s. And also just getting started in his focus on cancer research right now, which is fascinating to hear his next gear that he's working on after many also working within the community as well.

Well, we both joined UCSD at the same time and we became friends. And then one day he said, you know, Don, I'm going to quit and start a company. And I said, why would you do that? Right, yeah.

Why would you do that? Well, for many reasons, as you have come to find as well, which. What do you. What do you see, like the outcome of the summit? You know, I know there's gonna be a lot of learnings and documented. How do you think it propagates from here all the way, a year, one year from now?

Well, I really think that there is no society where all the people doing societal works can get together as learning. Experiences. A lot of the professionals, when they have a meeting, each one brags, they say, I did this, isn't that wonderful? And I did this, isn't that wonderful? You don't learn anything. I want them to say, here are the kind of challenges we're facing. We have real problem getting funding. The funders want us to spell out a 10 year program and every step along the way, that's how you fail because you have to be very flexible. You have to be able to change when things change and you have to work with the people and you have to test the small steps and we have to educate funders. And so we may want to call a meeting. We have already started talking about calling a meeting in the fundraising companies together with the Aga Khan Foundation. And I also want to bring in a conference for practitioners as a learning experience. And I'd love to have somebody else run the conference. I don't have to run everything. In fact, I can't run everything. So it has to be sustainable. But conferences like this become sustainable simply from the fees you charged attendees. And they have to be affordable though, because a lot of the people that we want to attract don't have much money. And we want to do this across the world. And one way we're going to do it is, well, we had application in 26 nations already. We would like to run the conference at different cities across the world simply to demonstrate that, first of all, make it easier for people at different locations to get to. And second, to show it's not just American, this is a worldwide effort. And so another country has stepped in and volunteered to do it. And they have really good background, et cetera. And actually we just agreed, we just reached agreement on this, just this last week because they had to work with their own government to get funding and to get permission. But that's happening. And so as I said in November 15th we'll announce it, but we're also looking for other sites and we know of a few other countries that have talked to us about doing it. I know that people in India would like to be able to do it. In fact, there may be a fight among them about which part of India, which city or which university. And we were suggesting, well, why not band together? And there's other countries that have been talking to us.

That's great. Love to hear the continuity already, even going into year one. It's huge. We're incredibly fortunate in San Diego for it to be in our backyard in year one so that we kind of get a front row seat. We'll link to the tickets to the summit. Who are some of the people you would like to see even locally? Make sure that they come so that they're taking away knowledge so that maybe they're bringing it up.

Well, most, most of the people would be the people who are heavily involved in the world design capital, the San Diego Tijuana combination. So in fact it's very difficult to get visas to come to the United States from some countries. So we're holding a secondary conference at the same time in Tijuana and we're trying to make sure that that's going to be an exciting conference for the people who are there but couldn't get into the United States. So we're going to have continual video, two way video we'll be able to, we have during our question sessions in the, in the main conference, it'll be open to people from Tijuana. I had a phone call just this morning with the audio visual people about how we're going to manage that in Tijuana and interact with the people here. And so we're setting that one up and so those are the people I would.

Absolutely, we. And by the way, just coming off of again Startup week where day two of a five day conference was in Tijuana where it moved around not just the county but the mega region. So I think, you know, in that regard like there's a lot of different communities who are really in agreement around like this mega region aspect that we are solving two different countries but really the same problems together at a humanity level. Maybe one from an entrepreneurial aspect, maybe one from government and you know, all the way down to utilities between our two sites of the border here. But what's also pretty cool is that this being the largest land crossing in the world enables you to try iterate and solve that. You're then going to broadcast A major.

Problem we have on this border is that the mayors of Tijuana and of San Diego would like to solve a lot of the border problems. I mean I remember the days when we would just be in San Diego and say, let's have dinner. Oh, I know a new restaurant in Tijuana. You could just drive to Tijuana, have a restaurant, have a food and come back. You can't do that anymore. The border is a real problem. But to solve the border problems really requires collaboration between Mexico city and Washington D.C. once you get up to that level of politics though, the details of the local things don't concern them anymore. These are bigger issues that's what makes it complex because the local people do want to collaborate and do want to solve the problem. We keep petitioning Washington to please help us and.

Yeah, well, something worth entirely worth working on since it is at the largest.

It'S very important to work on. It's the largest border crossing in the United States, one of the largest in the world. And, and there's so many people who live in one country and work in the other in both directions. And it's been, it's really helps enriching both countries.

And something you mentioned, dinner, something we all do is break bread or get together for some great Mexican food.

There is wonderful. By the way, Mexican food is not tacos and refried beans. There are really excellent restaurants in Tijuana that people who haven't, who haven't been away from the border food would be very surprised at the quality of the food. One of the best Japanese rest food I've ever had was in Tijuana.

Amazing. I mean we just, a few of us just came back from a really enriching trip in the Valle de Guadalupe where the food scene meets the grape culture, wine culture and hospitality culture, which is eye opening for me to see it this past summer. And you know, people are taking even your taco, which many people think has been done many times so many different ways, just from the Birria taco which you can find on a street corner in Tijuana or at a Michelin star restaurant, you know, so, you know, even tacos have been elevated in that regard and taken to a whole new level. Do you have a favorite spot that you go for at least for tacos? We'll start there.

Oh yes. It is the case that I want to make sure that people realize that tacos is mostly border food. It comes actually from the indigenous Indians who used to live here and some of it is combined with the Spanish culture. But yeah, in San Diego, my favorite restaurant is Lola 55. It's in downtown San Diego. It's very close to the park and market, UCSD buildings within walking distance. And it's actually a very informal place. You walk in and it's very informal and there's. You sort of order at the counter and pay and then you go find a table and the food comes to you. But it's wonderful food, really great tacos. In fact, Michelin has given it a special notice. Michelin guide gives lots of stars, but they also have a special section where they say here are outstanding restaurants. But we didn't. They're not half a star. Because they're less expensive and they're less fancy and that's the kind of food I like.

Totally agree. I've been fortunate enough. I recently just met the owner up at the La Costa location, brand new in Carlsbad. He has a background as a Chief innovation officer at McDonald's. So he has seen big, big food, if you will, and then went on and helped, I think, at Shake Shack and Chipotle. And then when it was time for him to start his own, this is what he created. Right. A Michelin star worthy taco kitchen that, you know, at any given moment, by the way, is grilling some amazing meats outside and inside, you know, and, and even has, you know, like kind of a cocktail bar which also you would see in many taco restaurants, if you will. So it's a pretty unique place and.

That'S right, pretty fortunate. And the Lola 55 is a great cocktail bar too. So it does. And yeah, and it doesn't serve just tacos, but it's, it's because actually the best restaurants in the world now are mixtures. They bring in the best food from different, different areas of the world and they combine them in novel, really fascinating ways.

Yeah, fusion of some sort.

Fusion of various sorts. But again, in Mexico City and in Monterrey, which is where I was most recently, they still clearly are Mexican. They'll have spices and moles which are pretty unique to the Mexico community, but people don't realize how many different moles there are. Those are common now in some of the. I have Chin a cheese enchilada in Mexico City in a special mole sauce. That was just wonderful, just delightful.

Incredible. Well, we could go on for days talking Mexican food, that's for sure. So maybe we just need to meet up for some in that regard and have some together. But it's been incredible to have you on here, Don. Thank you so much for not just sharing your learnings, but being able to communicate it to the world. That really builds a movement, a movement of leaders who are taking on your legacy. And now with this Don Norman Award Summit, I think, you know, this is really going to elevate an entire way of thinking that, like you said, learns from our failures, inspires leaders who are at the earliest stages of their careers to in a sense, fail forward and take those learnings and pass them on to the next generation as well too. So what an incredible legacy. And thank you for never retiring and continuing to work on this for us.

And thank you, Neil.

Thanks. Thanks for being on the pod.

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Sam.