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• Quotes Found for You

 

Quotes Found for You

By Gerd Waloszek, SAP User Experience, SAP AG – Updated: March 23, 2012

On this page we collect quotes from people in the UI and graphic design field. This page will be continually expanded (newest additions are listed first).

Quote No. 77: Mark Weiser "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." (From The Computer for the 21st Century, 1991 )

Quote No. 76: Paul Rand "The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring." (After Andrei Michael Herasimchuk, Design by Fire, 2006)

Quote No. 75: Larry Tesler Tesler's Law: "Every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is who will have to deal with it, the user or the developer (programmer or engineer)." (From Living with Complexity, 2010; after Tesler and Saffer, 2007)

Quote No. 74: Don Norman "Designers can transform otherwise confusing systems into understandable ones. But if the systems are dealing with complex activities, that doesn't mean that the result will be immediately understandable and usable. In the end, the burden is on those who use them." (From Living with Complexity, 2010)

Quote No. 73: Don Norman "A single example of a simple thing is just that: simple. But when there are many simple things, each with its own rules of operation, the result is complexity. [...] Everyday life is often complex, not because any given activity is complex, but because there are so many apparently simple activities, each with its own set of idiosyncratic requirements." (From Living with Complexity, 2010)

Quote No. 72: Don Norman "Why do we deliberately build things that confuse the people who will use them? Answer: because people want the features. Because the so-called demand for simplicity is a myth whose time has passed, if it ever existed." (From Living with Complexity, 2010)

Quote No. 71: Don Norman "[Machines] are often designed by technically centric people who are far more concerned about the welfare of their machines than the welfare of the people who will use them. The logic of machines is imposed on people, human beings who do not work by the same rules of logic. As a result, we have species clash, for we are two different species, people and technology." (From Living with Complexity, 2010)

Quote No. 70: Don Norman "The keys to coping with complexity are to be found in two aspects of understanding. First is the design of the thing itself. ... Second is our own set of abilities and skills. ... Understandability and understanding: Two critical keys to mastery. The major issue is understanding: things we understand are no longer complicated, no longer confusing." (From Living with Complexity, 2010)

Quote No. 69: Jeff Johnson "Following user-interface design guidelines is not as straightforward as following cooking recipes. Design rules often describe goals rather than actions. They are purposefully very general to make them broadly applicable, but that means that their applicability to specific design situations is open to interpretation." (From Designing with the Mind in Mind, 2010)

Quote No. 68: Jeff Johnson "Unfortunately, with a few exceptions ..., user-interface design guidelines are provided as simple lists of design edicts with little or no rationale or background." (From Designing with the Mind in Mind, 2010)

Quote No. 67: Jeff Johnson "[...] Interaction design is a skill, not something than anyone can do by following a recipe. Learning that skill amounts to learning not only what the design guidelines are but also how to recognize which rules to follow in each design situation." (From Designing with the Mind in Mind, 2010)

Quote No. 66: Nathan Shedroff "Designers are taught to make 'new' when it isn't really better or when 'old' doesn't need replacing." (From Design Is the Problem, 2009)

Quote No. 65: Nathan Shedroff "Design that is about appearance, or margins, or offerings and market segments, and not about real people – their needs, abilities, desires, emotions, and so on – that's the design that is the problem. The design that is about systems solutions, intent, appropriate and knowledgeable integration of people, planet, and profit, and the design that, above all, cares about customers as people and not merely consumers – that's the design that can lead to healthy, sustainable solutions." (From Design Is the Problem, 2009)

Quote No. 64: Nathan Shedroff "Design requires decisions that narrow possibilities, ultimately until there is one solution. Designing more sustainable offerings may require you to balance inputs and outcomes and, often, compromise. It's rare, in fact, that you'll achieve everything that you want." (From Design Is the Problem, 2009)

Quote No. 63: Alan Cooper "Over the years, when interaction designers ask me which design technique works best, I have assured them that this is not so much a battle of technique as it is a struggle for power. The same holds true today as we, the responsible craftsmen, wrestle power away from those people who insist on living in the past." (From An Insurgency of Quality, 2009)

Quote No. 62: Alan Cooper "In the design world, I have seen a clear difference between those design practices that are craft-based and those that are art-based. The latter is based on someone's opinion, while the former is based on the demonstrable improvement in the actual end user's experience." (From An Insurgency of Quality, 2009)

Quote No. 61: Alan Cooper "Designers argue endlessly about the differences between User Experience Designers and Interaction Designers; which is better, contextual enquiry or goal-directed design? Or whether personas are real or just made up. Like all of you, I have a position in these battles. I'm in support of what works best." (From An Insurgency of Quality, 2009)

Quote No. 60: Alan Cooper "The craft of agile has clearly demonstrated its immense power to enhance software development. It has proven its ability to deliver better quality software, in far less time, and with happier teams. Similarly, the craft of interaction design has demonstrated great power to enhance the quality of the software user's experience. Skillfully applied, interaction design can also speed the delivery of better quality software, in less time, with happier teams." (From An Insurgency of Quality, 2009)

Quote No. 59: Brenda Laurel "Designers have their own 'old' models to contend with. Brand/identity designer David Canaan wryly observes that most designers seem to see their mission as 'educating the general public about good taste.' But over the last decade, the balance of power between those who sell products or services and those who buy them has undergone radical change. Thanks in part to the rise of the Web, communication between companies and audiences has moved from one-way-persuasion to two-way dialogs about needs, desires, problems and dreams." (From introduction to Design Research, 2003)

Quote No. 58: David Canaan "Creative people share 3 common traits: 1. the ability to make new associations from unrelated elements, 2. willingness to pursue an idea they know they will ultimately reject, and 3. tolerance for ambiguity over time." (From Research to Fuel the Creative Process, In: Design Research, 2003; suggested by Visvapriya Sathiyam)

Quote No. 57: Jonathan Ive "Perhaps the decisive factor [that distinguishes the products that his team at Apple Inc. develops] is fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff: the obsessive attention to details that are often overlooked. ... So many companies are competing against each other with similar agendas. Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see. A preoccupation with differentiation is the concern of many corporations rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better." (From Design Meets Disability, 2009 and designmuseum.org/design/jonathan-ive (original source))

Quote No. 56: Graham Pullin "The design issues around disability are underexplored, and demand and deserve far more radical approaches, whereas art school iconoclasm is conspicuous by its absence. What is needed is truly interdisciplinary design thinking, combining and blurring design craft with engineering brilliance, therapeutic excellence, and the broadest experiences of disabled people." (From Design Meets Disability, 2009)

Quote No. 55: Graham Pullin "Good design often requires the courage to value simplicity over being 'all things to all people.' This might conflict with some definitions of universal design, yet at the same time it can actually make a design more accessible because simple products are often the most cognitively and culturally inclusive." (From Design Meets Disability, 2009)

Quote No. 54: Graham Pullin "If there is a welcome change in our approach to disability, it follows that the role of design needs to change too, and therefore the nature of the design teams must change as well. Design processes need to become more inclusive in several ways, involving not only disabled people themselves but also a greater diversity of designers. ... Art school design disciplines are as essential to the mix as engineering and human factors." (From Design Meets Disability, 2009)

Quote No. 53: Ben Shneiderman* "Improved messages will be of the greatest benefit to novice users, but regular users and experienced professionals will also benefit; ... . As examples of excellence proliferate, complex, obscure, and harsh interfaces will seem increasingly out of place. The crude environments of the past will be replaced gradually by interfaces designed with the users in mind." (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 52: Ben Shneiderman* "Improving error messages is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve an existing interface." (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 51: Ben Shneiderman* "Recognition of the creative challenge of balancing function and fashion might be furthered by having designers put their names and photos on a title or credits page, just as authors do in a book. ... Credits provide recognition for good work and identify the people responsible. Having their names in lights may also encourage designers to work even harder, since their identities will be public." (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 50: Ben Shneiderman* "Is the modern era of employee multitasking between numerous applications coupled with routine office distractions spreading us too thin, adding stress, and drastically reducing productivity, ultimately affecting corporate profits?" (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 49: Ben Shneiderman* "The introspective and isolated style of past computer use has given way to a lively social environment where training has to include netiquette (network etiquette) and cautions about flame wars." (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 48: Ben Shneiderman* "Developing successful online and networked communities is not easy, as revealed by the thousands of electronic ghost towns without any participants." (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 47: Ben Shneiderman* "The good news is that computing, once seen as alienating and antihuman, is becoming a socially respectable and interpersonally positive force." (From Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition, 2009; *) coauthors are: Cathérine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs)

Quote No. 46: Kevin O'Regan "... seeing constitutes an active process of probing the external environment as though it were a continuously available external memory. This allows one to understand why, despite the poor quality of the visual apparatus, we have the subjective impression of great richness and 'presence' of the visual world: But this richness and presence are actually an illusion, created by the fact that if we so much as faintly ask ourselves some question about the environment, an answer is immediately provided by the sensory information on the retina, possibly rendered available by an eye movement." (From Solving the "Real" Mysteries of Visual Perception: The World as an Outside Memory [publicly available draft version], 1992; referred to by Colin Ware in Visual Thinking: For Design, 2008)

Quote No. 45: Don Norman "The power of the unaided mind is highly overrated. Without external aids, memory, thought, and reasoning are all constrained. But human intelligence is highly flexible and adaptive, superb at inventing procedures and objects that overcome its own limits. The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities. How have we increased memory, thought, and reasoning? By the invention of external aids: It is things that make us smart." (From Things that Make Us Smart, 1993; cited by Colin Ware in Visual Thinking: For Design, 2008)

Quote No. 44: Colin Ware "Visual thinking consists of a series of acts of attention, driving eye movements and tuning our pattern-finding circuits. These actions are called visual queries, und understanding how visual queries work can make us better designers." (From Visual Thinking: For Design, 2008)

Quote No. 43: Colin Ware "We can now begin to develop a science of graphic design based on a scientific understanding of visual attention and pattern perception." (From Visual Thinking: For Design, 2008)

Quote No. 42: Bill Buxton "Even if you do a brilliant job of building what you originally set out to build, if it is the wrong product, it still constitutes a failure. Likewise you also fail if you build the right product the wrong way. Stated another way, we must adopt an approach that inherently aspires to get the right design as well as get the design right." (From Sketching User Experiences, 2008)

Quote No. 41: Bill Buxton "My belief is that one of the most significant reasons for the failure of organizations to develop new software products in-house is the absence of anything that a design professional would recognize as an explicit design process." (From Sketching User Experiences, 2008; citation from 2003)

Quote No. 40: Bill Buxton "The only way to engineer the future tomorrow is to have lived in it yesterday." (From Sketching User Experiences, 2008)

Quote No. 39: Bill Buxton "Hardly a day goes by that we don't see an announcement for some new product or technology that is going to make our lives easier, solve some or all of our problems, or simply make the world a better place. However, the reality is that few of these products survive, muss less deliver on their typically over-hyped promise. But are we learning from these expensive mistakes? Very little, in my opinion." (From Sketching User Experiences, 2008)

Quote No. 38: Harold Thimbleby "Another [danger sign] is how computers encourage us to make our society more and more complex – in fact, our laws (tax being a good example) are so complicated that it would be hard to stay in business without a computer to help. If the government assumes every business has a computer, then it can impose regulations that only a computer can cope with." (From Press On, 2007)

Quote No. 37: Harold Thimbleby "As designers, we don't want to moan, but make the world a better place." (From Press On, 2007)

Quote No. 36: Jeff Johnson "When a software product is not responsive enough, programmers tend to blame poor algorithms and inefficient implementation. They try to improve the algorithms and tune the performance of the application's functions. Their ideal is that all functions should execute as close to instantaneously as possible. This causes delays in release dates while programmers try to speed up unacceptably 'slow' products. The software is often eventually released event though it is still slower than developers, managers, and customers had hoped." (From GUI Bloopers 2.0, 2007)

Quote No. 35: Jeff Johnson "Programmers often blame poor responsiveness on slow computer hardware. According to this view, poor responsiveness is a trivial problem because higher performance computers will soon be available, and upgrading to those will solve the problem. This view ignores history: in the past 25 years, computer power and speed have increased by a factor of several hundred or more, yet responsiveness is still as much of a problem as ever." (From GUI Bloopers 2.0, 2007)

Quote No. 34: Rich Gold "Creativity is making something new that also opens up a new category, a new genre, or a new type of thing. ... But there is another meaning of the word creative that also has a qualitative connotation: It's not just something that has never been before, but it is something good, or useful, or communicative, or impressive, or beautiful and that a few people would buy for large amounts of money or that lots of people would buy for a small amount." (From The Plenitude, 2007)

Quote No. 33: Rich Gold "The sense of eternalness in our culture comes from everything being ever new. This is at the core of our culture. We must make things to get money to buy other things, including food and shelter. And since we can't make what others are making – by law and by the laws of the marketplace – it is only through creativity and innovation that we survive." (From The Plenitude, 2007)

Quote No. 32: Rich Gold "For an artist user-testing is a joke. For a designer it is fundamental. If an artist looks inward as a way of seeing the world, the designer looks outward towards others. An artist paints a painting, stares at it, and says, “isn't it beautiful, it expresses my inner vision perfectly.” The designer paints a painting, stares at, then turns it around to the audience and asks “Do you like it? No? Then I'll change it.”" (From The Plenitude, 2007)

Quote No. 31: Sarah Horton "Partnering with users requires two things: First, we have to design for transformation. Our pages must have flexible elements, and the overall design must uphold to change. Second, we need to recognize and respect the boundaries of the user domain." (From Access by Design, 2005)

Quote No. 31: Sarah Horton "Partnering with users requires two things: First, we have to design for transformation. Our pages must have flexible elements, and the overall design must uphold to change. Second, we need to recognize and respect the boundaries of the user domain." (From Access by Design, 2005)

Quote No. 30: Sarah Horton "Until this time [that is, before the introduction of 'users' into the Web design process], I felt my role as a designer was to make decisions about the design of my pages on behalf of the user, based on what I knew on graphic, interface, and information design. Once I started with users, I could derive design decisions by observing user behavior and feedback." (From Access by Design, 2005)

Quote No. 29: Sarah Horton "Making decisions – that is the task of the designer. Good decisions have a basis: a purpose to uphold and best practices to achieve that purpose." (From Access by Design, 2005)

Quote No. 28: Mary Frances Theofanos & Janice Redish "Meeting the required accessibility standards does not ... necessarily mean that a Web site is usable for people with disabilities. And if a Web site is not usable, it is not really accessible, even if it has all the elements required by the law." (From Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work With Screen Readers, 2003/2006)

Quote No. 27: Ben Shneiderman "More time is wasted in front of computers than on highways." (From Universal Usability, 2000)

Quote No. 26: Don Norman "Designers go astray for several reasons. First, the reward structure of the design community tends to put aesthetics first. ... Second, designers are not typical users. ... Third, ... designers must please their clients, and the clients may not be the users." (From The Design of Everyday Things , 2002)

Quote No. 25: Don Norman "The paradox of technology – the same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use – should never be used as an excuse for poor design. It is true that as the number of options and capabilities of any device increase, so too must the number and complexity of the controls. But the principles of good design can make complexity manageable." (From The Design of Everyday Things , 2002, adapted )

Quote No. 24: Don Norman "Of course, people do make errors. Complex devices will always require some instruction, and someone using them without instruction should expect to make errors and to be confused. But designers should take special pains to make errors as cost-free as possible." (From The Design of Everyday Things , 2002)

Quote No. 23: Don Norman "If an error is possible, someone will make it. The designer must assume that all possible errors will occur and design so as to minimize the chance of the error in the first place, or its effect once it gets made. Errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and, if possible, their effects should be reversible." (From The Design of Everyday Things , 2002)

Quote No. 22: David Kelley "Interaction design started from two separate directions, with screen graphics for displays and separate input devices, but it got more interesting when the hardware and software came together in products. Then along came the information appliance, implying that technology would start to fit into our everyday lives, and when the Internet connected everything together, we found ourselves designing complete experiences." (From Designing Interactions, 2007)

Quote No. 21: Cordell Ratzlaff "As interaction designers, we need to remember that it is not about the interface, it's about what people want to do! To come up with great designs, you need to know who those people are and what they are really trying to accomplish." (From Designing Interactions, 2007)

Quote No. 20: John Maeda "The best designers in the world all squint when they look at something. They squint to see the forest from the trees – to find the right balance. Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less." (From The Laws of Simplicity, 2006)

Quote No. 19: John Maeda "Imagine a world in which software companies simplified their programs every year by shipping with 10% fewer features at 10% higher cost due to the expense of simplification For the consumer to get less and pay more seems to contradict sound economic principles. ... Yet in spite of the logic of demand, 'simplicity sells.' ... The undeniable commercial success of the Apple iPod – a device that does less but costs more than other digital music players – is a key supporting example of this trend. ... People not only buy, but more importantly love, designs that can make their lives simpler." (From The Laws of Simplicity, 2006)

Quote No. 18: Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini "Make HCI bugs 'first-class' bugs like engineering bugs." Or: "Ensure HCI problems are flagged as standard 'bugs'." (From course and course material, 2006)

Quote No. 17: Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza "Interestingly, all the user-centered mantras in HCI have repeated the need to know the users. This is undeniably a fundamental requirement for designing good products. But we have never seen a suggestion that users should know designers." (From The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction, 2005)

Quote No. 16: John Thackara "When continuous acceleration is the default tempo of innovation, it leads to 'feature bloat' in products and the phenomenon, which we are seeing now, of customers who resist the pressure to upgrade devices or software continually." (From In the Bubble, 2005)

Quote No. 15: Jef Raskin "Once the product's task is known, design the interface first; then implement to the interface design. ... As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the the product." (Cited by Malcolm McCullough in Digital Ground, 2004)

Quote No. 14: John Carroll "The worst misstep one can make in design is to solve the wrong problem." (Cited by Malcolm McCullough in Digital Ground, 2004)

Quote No. 13: Malcolm McCullough "The prevailing computer-human interaction (CHI) model of interface design has been partly responsible for the current state of the desktop computer. The breakthrough on which the field emerged was the admission of psychological principles. The resulting graphical user interface has been the focus of the field of computer-human interaction for nearly 20 years. This interface is a virtual control panel whose design has remained quite technology-centered." (From Digital Ground, 2004)

Quote No. 12: Malcolm McCullough "..., current interfaces illustrate how many computer scientists are biased toward efficiency with technological resources rather than human attention; or to put it bluntly, toward convenience for computers before convenience for people." (From Digital Ground, 2004)

Quote No. 11: Malcolm McCullough "Graphical user interfaces have long been built on principles of shifting focus – picking up a tool, opening and closing a window, etc. – but they still leave us staring at a cluttered screen. " (From Digital Ground, 2004)

Quote No. 10: Sarah Kuhn "Most people who encounter computer-based automation at work do not choose the software with which they work, and have comparatively little control over when and how they do what they do. For them, the use of computers can be an oppressive experience, rather than a liberating one. " (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996)

Quote No. 9: Laura De Young "It is pointless – perhaps even damaging – to conduct usability tests merely because testing is fashionable or required by management. ... If designers do not have the time, energy, or authority to make changes, or if they are too deeply attached to their design to be willing to change it, there is no point in asking customers what they want." (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996)

Quote No. 8: Peter Denning and Pamela Dargan "The standard engineering design process produces a fundamental blindness to the domains of actions in which the customers of software live and work." (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996)

Quote No. 7: Paul Saffo "We use tools to accomplish tasks, and we abandon tools when the effort required to make the tool deliver exceeds our threshold of indignation. ... (... the threshold of indignation (is) the maximal behavioral compromise that we are willing to make to get a task done.)" (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996)

Quote No. 6: Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor "If interaction design is considered only at the end, software is driven by engineering design, of which users are rightly unaware, rather than by representations with which they interact." (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996)

Quote No. 5: David Liddle "Software design is the act of determining the user's experience with a piece of software. It has nothing to do with how the code works inside, or how big or small the code is. The designer's task is to specify completely and unambiguously the user's whole experience." (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996)

Quote No. 4: Mitchell Kapor "Despite the enormous outward success of personal computers, the daily experience of using computers far too often is still fraught with difficulty, pain, and barriers for most people.... The lack of usability of software and the poor design of programs are the secret shame of the industry." (From Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, Software Design Manifesto, 1996)

Quote No. 3: Ben Shneiderman "The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about what users can do. Successful technologies are those that are in harmony with users' needs. They must support relationships and activities that enrich the users' experiences." (From Leonardo's Laptop, 2002)

Quote No. 2: Don Norman "Although the computer has changed dramatically since the 1980s, the basic way we use it hasn't. The Internet and World Wide Web give much more power, much more information, along with more things to lose track of, more places to get lost in. More ways to confuse and confound. It's time to start over." (From The Invisible Computer, 1998)

Quote No. 1: Don Norman "Making everything visible is great when you only have twenty things. When you have twenty thousand, it only adds to the confusion." (From The Invisible Computer, 1998)

 

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