Edward Tufte Quotes

If ergonomists have their way, future products won't be built for some hypothetical average person but will conform to the biomechanical needs of whatever particular human body happens to come into contact with them.

At the core of the products we build, I want to think about productivity centered around people.

When you and I go to work, and we use a computer to work and find that our work apps are completely onerous and the apps we use at home are quite easy, we wonder, why can't it be simpler, easier, quicker, and less expensive?

I've experienced firsthand the disconnect between furniture, their environments, and the way people work.

Ironically, the thing that will likely make the least improvement in the ease of use of software-based products is new technology. There is little difference technically between a complicated, confusing program and a simple, fun, and powerful product.

I'm fully capable of multitasking certain conceptual concerns within the work.

When I ask people how much time they spend not doing their job - time spent on 'work-about-work' or phone calls or e-mails - people regularly tell me 60, or even 90 percent. So if Asana could take that down closer to zero, we could potentially double the effectiveness of humanity.

Basically, I want to make all of humanity more efficient by exploiting the human cycles that get wasted.

I have always believed that technology should do the hard work - discovery, organization, communication - so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.

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

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

Instead of using the machine as a metaphor for architecture, as Le Corbusier did, I use the human body. I want the public to know that it's them I'm designing for.

There are lots of Linux users who don't care how the kernel works, but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is.

What people who are doing shift work or managing shift workers or deciding to put people on shift schedules to begin with should realize that we're not robots.

The tubular steel chair is surely rational from technical and constructive points of view. It is light, suitable for mass production, and so on. But steel and chromium surfaces are not satisfactory from the human point of view.

I read so much data. There's so much information that comes my way. And there's got to be a way for me to delegate more.

A lot of times I make people better by getting stupid, distracting, bureaucratic stuff off their desk. That's an incredibly easy way to make a senior person more productive.

If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people.

In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.

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

We've spent a lot of time on ergonomics. That was something we found to be really important as we iterated on the headset, from developer kits to Crescent Bay to the Rift.

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.

Never use technology for technology's sake.

The problem with trying to measure productivity is that it measures only how well people can do the wrong jobs. Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated from the list of jobs that people do.

What was worked out at Ford was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow of these units at the right time and the right place to a moving final assembly line from which came a finished product.