Daily UX Inspiration (Part 5)

My all-time favorite quotes on design

Since the deprecation of Medium’s Series, I’m transitioning past content to posts paired with images that stimulate the Overview Effect. All photos by USGS.

For more quotes, see Part 1,Part 2,Part 3, Part 4.

You have power as a designer to change the relationship someone has with an object. Your challenge is to keep people looking.

—David Pearson

The job of the designer is to make things understandable, usable, accessible, enjoyable… important to a public, that involves the public.

— Paula Scher

Creative people have to believe in the value of their work…a belief in the value of the work fuels the desire to express something.

— Peter Saville

I’m a fan of balance and order, but I like to put that extra layer on top. It makes it more dynamic.

— April Greiman

The first thing you need to make clear to a client is that you aren’t there to answer his wants but to answer his needs.

— Massimo Vignelli

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

— George Earle Buckle

Design based on data brings us back to the essence of design and will leave out all unnecessary decoration.

— Jeanne de Bont

Good UI design gives users a comprehensible sense of power that consistently helps them feel in control.

— Jim Nielsen

‘Does it better’ will always beat ‘did it first.’

— Aaron Levie

Instead of prescribing the appearance of individual items, we build systems to anticipate them.

— Heydon Pickering

Asking users to adopt new behaviors or even modify their existing behaviors is very, very hard.

— Khoi Vin

Internet technology has really upended that whole [design] equation because in some ways a designer’s work is never really done online.

— Khoi Vin

…a good facilitator adopts three personalities simultaneously: the flight attendant, the sportscaster, and the scientist.

— Jared Spool

During a testing session, users should do 99% of the talking.

— Jaclyn Perrone

Give users control over when change affects them.

— Jared Spool

To create meaningful solutions we must understand the emotional range of our audience.

— Misael Leon

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

— John Tukey

I am convinced that abstract form, imagery, color, texture, and material convey meaning equal to or greater than words.

— Katherine McCoy

Every project is an opportunity to learn, to figure out problems and challenges, to invent and reinvent.

— David Rockwell

When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go where we’ve already been. If process drives the outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

— Bruce Mau

Designers have a responsibility to show the future as they want it to be — or at least as it can be, not just the way an industry wants it to be.

— Yves Behar

The fundamental idea of design is to make the world a better place.

— Bruce Mau

Instead of prescribing the appearance of individual items, we build systems to anticipate them.

— Heydon Pickering

Mobile does not reward feature richness.

— Fred Wilson

Usability testing shows you if something is usable. Beta testing shows you if people will actually use it.

— Rachel Decker

If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings.

— Tom & David Kelley

Successful onboarding comes down to this: “getting to product value as fast as possible — but not faster.

—Luke W

Design work is about imagining new possibilities and then making them feel achievable.

— Suzanne Howard

We can only tackle increasingly complex challenges with increasingly diverse voices and perspectives.

— Zvika Krieger

Aesthetic elements create a positive relationship with users that, in turn, make such troubles more tolerable and the devices more successful.

— William Lidwell

Value research. Try it, learn from it, and apply it.

— Randy J. Hunt

The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing.

— Clay Shirky

Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.

— Randy J. Hunt

Technology, we find, amplifies behaviors. If you want to be anti-social, technology allows you to be. And vice versa.

— Jan Chipchase

When you want to know how and why people do the things they do, the best people to learn from are the doers themselves, and the best place to learn is where the doing gets done.

— Jan Chipchase

If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.

— William McDonough

Our designs are not ethical or unethical in that they’re using ethical or unethical means of persuading us. They have a moral component just in the kind of vision and the aspiration of the good life that they present to us.

— Sebastian Deterding

An idea should live in its lowest fidelity form until it has meaningful reason to do otherwise. The more we invest in the fidelity of something the harder it is to abandon.

— Stephen Olmstead

Much of bad design isn’t bad design — it’s work done without design…The way companies make commitments is the first design problem. It constrains everything afterward.

— Ryan Singer

If you want to feel good, brainstorm it. If you want to appear good, test it. If you want to know if you’re any good, ship it.

— Jason Fried

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.

—Edwin Land

Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go.

— Seth Godin

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

— George Bernard Shaw

…we often under-communicate our ideas. They’re already so familiar to us that we underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them.

— Adam Grant

On matters of style, swim with the current; in on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

— Thomas Jefferson

Experts are rarely insulted by something that is clear enough for beginners. Everybody appreciates clarity.

—Steve Krug

What makes something simple or complex? It’s not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has. It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates.

— Donald Norman

Engineers and designers simultaneously know too much and too little…too much about the technology and too little about how other people live their lives and do their activities.

— Donald Norman

…legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.

— Adrian Frutiger

The problem with data is that it says a lot, but it also says nothing. To understand why something is happening, we have to engage in both forensics and guess work.

— Sendhil Mullainathan

This list of favorites is from a collection of365+ quotes, hence the series name.

Did you enjoy this post? Buy me a coffee to give my brain a hug. 🍵

Feel free to check out my design work or my handbook on UX design, upgrading your portfolio and understanding design thinking.

Daily UX Inspiration (Part 5)

Daily UX Inspiration (Part 5)

My all-time favorite quotes on design

You have power as a designer to change the relationship someone has with an object. Your challenge is to keep people looking.

The job of the designer is to make things understandable, usable, accessible, enjoyable… important to a public, that involves the public.

Creative people have to believe in the value of their work…a belief in the value of the work fuels the desire to express something.

I’m a fan of balance and order, but I like to put that extra layer on top. It makes it more dynamic.

The first thing you need to make clear to a client is that you aren’t there to answer his wants but to answer his needs.

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

Design based on data brings us back to the essence of design and will leave out all unnecessary decoration.

Good UI design gives users a comprehensible sense of power that consistently helps them feel in control.

‘Does it better’ will always beat ‘did it first.’

Instead of prescribing the appearance of individual items, we build systems to anticipate them.

Asking users to adopt new behaviors or even modify their existing behaviors is very, very hard.

Internet technology has really upended that whole [design] equation because in some ways a designer’s work is never really done online.

…a good facilitator adopts three personalities simultaneously: the flight attendant, the sportscaster, and the scientist.

During a testing session, users should do 99% of the talking.

Give users control over when change affects them.

To create meaningful solutions we must understand the emotional range of our audience.

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

I am convinced that abstract form, imagery, color, texture, and material convey meaning equal to or greater than words.

Every project is an opportunity to learn, to figure out problems and challenges, to invent and reinvent.

Designers have a responsibility to show the future as they want it to be — or at least as it can be, not just the way an industry wants it to be.

The fundamental idea of design is to make the world a better place.

Instead of prescribing the appearance of individual items, we build systems to anticipate them.

Mobile does not reward feature richness.

Usability testing shows you if something is usable. Beta testing shows you if people will actually use it.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings.

Successful onboarding comes down to this: “getting to product value as fast as possible — but not faster.

Design work is about imagining new possibilities and then making them feel achievable.

We can only tackle increasingly complex challenges with increasingly diverse voices and perspectives.

Aesthetic elements create a positive relationship with users that, in turn, make such troubles more tolerable and the devices more successful.

Value research. Try it, learn from it, and apply it.

The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing.

Technology, we find, amplifies behaviors. If you want to be anti-social, technology allows you to be. And vice versa.

If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.

If you want to feel good, brainstorm it. If you want to appear good, test it. If you want to know if you’re any good, ship it.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.

Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go.

On matters of style, swim with the current; in on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Experts are rarely insulted by something that is clear enough for beginners. Everybody appreciates clarity.

…legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.

Recommend

About Joyk