Week 10 in the Grove: Design with Don Norman and the Weekly Observatories
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Paths & Clearings
For mapping and clarifying subjects.
Watch
Don Norman: The Way We Design Today Is Wrong!
Principles of Human-Centered Design (Don Norman)
Understanding the Principles of Design | Graphic Design Basic
The Engineering Design Process: A Taco Party
Key Reflection Points
Don Norman: The Way We Design Today Is Wrong! Norman critiques modern design for prioritizing short-term market success and consumer appeal while ignoring long-term environmental and societal costs, using examples like hard-to-recycle smartphones that generate massive waste through planned obsolescence and poor material choices. Drawing on Victor Papanek’s earlier warnings, he argues that designers often produce “junk” enabled by advertising rather than solving real human and planetary needs. Key reflections are that design carries moral responsibility beyond usability, sustainability and full lifecycle thinking must become core criteria, and the profession needs a fundamental shift away from extractive, disposable practices.
Principles of Human-Centered Design (Don Norman) Norman presents human-centered design as a mindset rather than a rigid checklist, centered on three core ideas: focus on people (all stakeholders, not just end users), solve the real root problem instead of surface symptoms, and always think in terms of interconnected systems. He emphasizes that the problem presented is often only a symptom and that local fixes can create larger failures. Key reflections include questioning the given brief is essential, systems thinking prevents narrow solutions, and continual observation and testing with real people keep designs grounded in actual needs.
Understanding the Principles of Design | Graphic Design Basic This video introduces foundational visual principles such as emphasis (making one element stand out), contrast (differences that create clarity and hierarchy), white space (intentional breathing room), movement (guiding the viewer’s eye), repetition (creating consistency and rhythm), balance (symmetrical or asymmetrical stability), and alignment (organizing elements into coherent relationships). These tools work together to make designs clearer, more engaging, and easier to understand. Principles are practical tools for communication and hierarchy rather than strict rules where mastering them enables intentional choices and good visual design directs attention and improves readability.
The Engineering Design Process: A Taco Party Using the fun analogy of throwing an impromptu taco party for hungry friends, the video maps the full engineering design cycle: define the problem/need, identify constraints and criteria, brainstorm options, select a promising solution, prototype, test with feedback, iterate based on results, and communicate the final outcome. Early “failures” (like PB&J on tortillas) drive improvement until a workable taco solution emerges. Highlights are that the process is iterative and feedback-driven, not linear. Constraints spark creativity, real testing with others reveals issues a solo designer might miss, and everyday problem-solving mirrors professional engineering practice.
Observatories
Explore Appalachian wildlife, aquatic biodiversity, plants, and the planetarium to see what’s beyond our world.
Bird
Cerulean Warbler
The cerulean warbler (Setophaga cerulea) is a small, canopy-dwelling songbird whose males display striking structural blue plumage produced by coherent light scattering in the keratin-air matrix of feather barbs, paired with a contrasting black breast band and white underparts. This coloration, along with pointed wings and rapid foraging movements high in deciduous forest canopies, functions in sexual signaling (age, condition, and quality indicators) and crypsis or flash displays amid leafy foliage, while its insectivorous diet and high-canopy niche reflect evolutionary adaptations to exploiting arthropod prey in complex eastern North American forest canopies, with delayed plumage maturation helping younger birds reduce aggression.
Bug
Appalachia Locust
Appalachia hebardi (the Appalachian grasshopper or “locust”) is a small, flightless (brachypterous) melanopline grasshopper with reduced tegmina, robust hind legs specialized for powerful jumping, and cryptic mottled brown-gray coloration that provides excellent camouflage against forest-floor and understory vegetation. Its form emphasizes terrestrial locomotion and cryptic escape behavior (zigzag leaps or remaining motionless) rather than flight or long-distance dispersal, functioning as an adaptation to stable, montane early-successional habitats in the Appalachians where limited mobility and slow reproduction (univoltine with few eggs) favor persistence in patchy, high-elevation or ridge environments with dense shrub and grass cover.
Wildlife
Appalachian Cottontail
The Appalachian cottontail (Sylvilagus obscurus) is a compact rabbit distinguished by a black spot between the ears, black-edged ear fur, and a reddish-gray coat overlaid with black wash, features that enhance crypsis in dense mountain understory. Its saltatorial (leaping) hindlimb morphology, zigzag escape runs, and ability to freeze motionless allow rapid predator evasion in high-elevation habitats; these traits, combined with adaptations for colder climates and a diet of twigs, leaves, and bark (including coprophagy for nutrient recovery), reflect evolutionary specialization for life in fragmented Appalachian balds, thickets, and young forests where cover and thermal buffering are critical.
Aquatic
Greenfin Darter
The greenfin darter (Nothonotus chlorobranchius) is a small, slender, benthic stream fish with a streamlined, somewhat dorsally compressed body, reduced or absent swim bladder, enlarged pectoral fins for station-holding, and vivid green-tinged fins (especially in breeding males). These features function to minimize drag and maintain position in fast, turbulent riffles over rocky substrates while foraging on the bottom; the bright fin coloration serves in sexual signaling, and genetic diversification of isolated populations driven by river erosion through differing rock types illustrates how landscape processes shape local adaptations within the upper Tennessee River drainage.
Greenhouse
Trailing White Monkshood
Trailing white monkshood (Aconitum reclinatum) is a perennial herb with weak, sprawling stems, palmately lobed leaves, and distinctive bilaterally symmetrical cream-to-white flowers whose uppermost sepal forms a tall, hood-like structure enclosing nectar-bearing petals. The hood morphology guides specialized pollinators (often bees) while protecting nectar and pollen; combined with toxic diterpene alkaloids that deter generalist herbivores, and a preference for cool, moist, mafic-substrate cove forests and seeps, these traits represent evolutionary adaptations for attracting reliable pollinators in shaded Appalachian understories while defending against browsing and promoting survival in stable, mesic microhabitats.
Planetarium
Gomez's Hamburger
Gomez’s Hamburger (IRAS 18059−3211) is a young A-type pre-main-sequence star surrounded by a nearly edge-on, flaring protoplanetary disk of gas and dust; the dark central “patty” is the optically thick midplane dust lane that obscures the star, while the bright “buns” are starlight scattered by dust above and below the plane. This morphology arises during the brief transitional phase when a forming star is still accumulating or clearing circumstellar material; the Keplerian-rotating disk functions as the reservoir from which planets may form, illustrating the evolutionary stage between a collapsing molecular cloud core and a mature planetary system.
