David Cohen Quotes

The Internet is full of choices, and nobody is going to make the choice to use a product that is hard to use or unattractive.

Products have to be designed in a way that they are comprehensible.

Good design to me is both appearance and functionality together. It's the experience that makes it good design.

We want the average person to use it and think that it makes the experience of using Pinterest better.

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.

When you go to a site, you usually run into usability problems pretty quickly. They're not hidden. They're not complicated. They're not baffling. They were in the design or crept into the design.

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.

Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

If you don't have an emotionally engaging design for a device, no one will care about it.

The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.

We've tried to simplify the site because some people found it too difficult to use and were intimidated by it.

Taken as a whole, consumer technologies have made startling advances, but they still are not as easy to use as they should be.

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.

If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person.

Design should be easy in the sense that every step should be obviously and clearly identifiable. Simplify elements to make change simple so you can manage the technical risk.

Things that are ultimately complex must have a simple end user experience if they are to be successful.

Twitter is all about user experience - the fact that it is so easy, so clean, so unencumbered has won it so many users and fans, for so many different reasons.

For much of its existence, design was all about convenience. We wanted to hide technology so that users are not distracted into thinking about the tools they use.

Keeping it simple for the consumer is incredibly dire.

I'm not a tech guy. I'm looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people's eyes.

Keep it simple, stupid. Good game design shouldn't keep you looking at the manual but should have enough depth where you feel like you bring something new to the game every time you play.

An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties.

I did an early version of my site where it was virtually impossible to get through it, just as a statement about the web. But after a few laughs and some angry e-mails, I realized it wasn't doing me much good. I think the web has become more about the final product, not what it takes to get to it.

I am always looking for ways to move technology away from being over-featured. Moving to Silicon Valley in the mid-1990s meant I grew up as a designer in an environment where technology is a tool and not a means to an end. I believe that design should be driven by ideas, not style.