Jimmy Wales Quotes

In many cases, the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary.

One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is a radical simplification of the interface.

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

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

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've spent my whole life worrying about the human-computer interface, so I don't want to suggest that what we have today is even close to acceptable.

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.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Interactivity and a better experience aren't always the same thing.

User experience is everything. It always has been, but it's undervalued and underinvested in. If you don't know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board.

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

One of the things I've learned with doing 'xkcd' is that you sort of give people, 'Here's the thing, and here's the button you can press to get another thing.' Sometimes that can be more easy to digest than, 'Here's a long page of things.'

Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.

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

In software, it's easy to understand what people want, and it's hard to build. Internet stuff is super easy to build, but it's hard to know what people want.

I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces.

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.

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

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.

Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.

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

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

Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That's its role.

Computers have become more friendly, understandable, and lots of years and thought have been put into developing software to convince people that they want and need a computer.

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.