Donald Arthur Norman, December 25, 1935 (New York, NY) -
VP candidate for Usability Party (2004)
Running mate with nominee: Jakob Nielsen (b. 1957)
Popular vote: 0 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Apparently motivated by the poor design of the 2000 Presidential ballot in Florida, computer usability expert Jakob Nielsen ran a mock campaign for the White House in 2004 on a single-issue platform of creating a more intelligible and intuitive voter interface. In his tongue-in-cheek webpage, Nielsen provided an example of what the future ballots should look like, and on it he provided the name of his business partner Don Norman of the Nielsen Norman Group as his Vice-Presidential selection.
Nielsen concluded his webpage with:
Predictions
I expect that within four years my ideas will be widely accepted, and the American people will be fully prepared to vote me as permanent God-Emperor of USAbility. Failure to obey this prediction will result in more catastrophic deaths due to poor interface design.
You have been warned.
Jakob Nielsen in 2004: At Least We'll Know Who Won This Time
Nielsen felt obliged to inform the politics1 website that he really wasn't seriously running, and was placed on the list of withdrawn candidates. The Nielsen/Norman ticket would have encountered a major hurdle if they had emerged victorious on Election Day. Nielsen was born in Denmark.
Election history: none
Other occupations: co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, teacher, author, researcher, lecturer
Notes:
"A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem."--Don Norman