In his famous 1988 book The Design of Everyday Things, the cognitive scientist Donald Norman suggests that the way we interact with objects and our surroundings is determined almost entirely by their design. People cannot be the primary reason things succeed or fail, because they are constant, while the design of the object itself is the variable. People can expect to learn how to use things better, but without an underlying people-centric and intuitive approach to design, the design will fail to some degree or other. He concludes that the designer should focus their attention on the interaction between people and the design of objects and surroundings. This principle becomes more relevant with each passing day, as the number of interactions we have with designed objects increases. This is most obvious with regard to our interactions with technology, but it is also apparent across our entire lives.
There can be no better or more contemporary than the example of Uber, for all their recent troubles. The technology behind the app is not seen as new or ground-breaking. What has allowed Uber to go from start-up to global prominence in the space of just nine years is the fact that it makes things easy for the user. Its strength is not its technology, but its design. The ability to order a car with a few taps of a smartphone screen transformed an entire sector worldwide.
This may be more apparent in the modern world, but the underlying principle has been understood for a long time. As long as half a century ago the designer Dieter Rams set out his famous Ten Principles of Good Design, which include the demands that good design makes a product useful, innovative, honest and understandable.