Jef Raskin Quotes

A well-designed and humane interface does not have to be split into beginner and expert subsystems.

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.

People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don't really need to understand humans so well.

I do believe that there are some universal cognitive tasks that are deep and profound - indeed, so deep and profound that it is worthwhile to understand them in order to design our displays in accord with those tasks.

I could open a thousand Excel documents and still never think to scroll past a wall of empty rows to see if, hidden beneath them, there is a tab I need to click. Just doesn't occur to me. Because, design.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

Once the product's task is known, design the interface first; then implement to the interface design.

One problem we discovered, for example, was that our "create a new account" button was in the wrong place...By simply moving it to the left side, mirroring the way people read, we saw a huge improvement in the way people used the site.

My mantra is: 'Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas.'

Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it's designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out.

The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.

IBM was the original contractor for much of the computer interface design on the film.

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

As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.

Design is directed toward human beings. To design is to solve human problems by identifying them and executing the best solution.

I closely follow everything about user interface or human-computer interface: technology that makes computers closer to the way the human being actually functions.

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

The payoff of a customer-centric approach to software and digital product design is substantial and long-lasting for both companies and their customers.

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.

There are already a lot of devices in our lives that have rich text or the ability to handle graphics. Our devices are designed to be understood in less than a quarter of a second.

I have problems with machines which aren't gestural.

If there's any object in human experience that's a precedent for what a computer should be like, it's a musical instrument: a device where you can explore a huge range of possibilities through an interface that connects your mind and your body, allowing you to be emotionally authentic and expressive.

Although designers continue to dream of 'transparency' - technologies that just do their job without making their presence felt - both creators and audiences actually like technologies with 'personality.'

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.