Herbert A. Simon Quotes

Often the most important moment in the design process is figuring out what the right question is.

When any great design thou dost intend, Think on the means, the manner, and the end.

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.

I studied to be an architect. And I find tremendous similarities between building a company and the design process. Businesses have to do their planning on the fly in a fashion similar to an architect sketching.

Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.

When we changed from Tiger to Nike, we had to have a design for the shoe. And where do you go to? There's no 'dial 9-1-1' for design.

Design is an iterative process. One idea often builds on another.

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.

Design is a thinking process that starts in the head and with sketches. Thinking cannot be done by a computer.

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.

You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future

Design is a career where you learn creative decision making.

The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that also becomes useful . . . Great designers also pursue a mission. Great designers design with mankind in mind . . . The crossroads of science and art, innovation and inspiration are what I love about design.

The design is done when the problem goes away.

Design is something you have to put your hand to.

Really great products, like @nest, have #design baked in from the beginning instead of slapped on at the end.

To design is to plan and to organize, to order, to relate and to control. In short it embraces all means of opposing disorder and accident. Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies man’s thinking and doing.

So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out.

We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer.

A good designer can create a design that accommodates all the constraints and still delivers an elegant, satisfying experience to the user. A great designer can go beyond this and create a design that demonstrates that some of those constraints weren’t really there to begin with.

Designing and implementing a strategy for change is a waste of time until you have discovered and embraced the current reality. If you don't know where you really are, it is impossible to get where you need to be.

I have the experience we need to make the changes we want and I think that's a winning case.