Ivan Chermayeff Quotes

You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.

I think it's really important to design things with a kind of personality.

There's a fundamental problem with how the software business does things. We're asking people who are masters of hard-edged technology to design the soft, human side of software as well. As a result, they make products that are really cool - if you happen to be a software engineer.

User-centered design means understanding what your users need, how they think, and how they behave - and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your process.

Knowing how people will use something is essential.

The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.

Design is people.

The world looks different and is understood differently at every spot on earth. Without accepting this simple truth it is hard for us to grasp the behavior of others, the motives and aims of those actions.

Empathy is key in the design process, especially when you start expanding outside of your comfort zone to new languages, cultures, and age groups. If you try to assume what those people want, you're likely to get it wrong.

I find that I often forget that people come from all over. In interfaces, products, experiences, and building for people, we always forget that people are not us.

I think an awful lot of the diplomatic problems that exist in the world come from people assuming that their society is the one with a purchase on truth.

You are not designing for yourself, and shouldn't be. Most people using the Web don't understand (most of) what makes it work and don't want to. Design for those people. There are many more of them than you.

Travelling as extensively as I do... the take away for me has made me very humble and very sympathetic to other people's plight in the world and very desirous of being proactive in being part of a solution somehow and not part of a problem. It's made me very patient and very grateful for where I live.

I would imagine that what you try to do is to - is to be as sensitive to the environment that surrounds you as possible. As you see, my work has become increasingly global. My presence in the world has become increasingly global.

When you try to help people become a better person, you're going to have to find out what's really going in their world.

There is so much crap in the world, both in show and other businesses, that I try to be vulnerable myself, in the hopes that there is some truth I can get to, that makes people feel less alone in the world.

If we took the time to learn more about different places and people, perhaps we would have more empathy for each other.

It doesn't do you any service to demonize any group of people. It's much better to try and understand from the inside.

That's something that I'm trying to do in my work, to send a message to western people. They're the ones who are completely disconnected.

I really enjoy learning about other people and I'm really curious about other people.

He just explained that he just wanted to help people and that was his way of helping people of, you know, being someone that he wasn't and trying to connect with somebody on a different level too and help 'em out.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you. But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew.

People first. Technology second.

Understanding people certainly impacts your ability to communicate with others.