Philip Greenspun Quotes

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.

The most common user action on a Web site is to flee.

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.

What people want is a seamless Web experience.

People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff.

Because the competitive landscape of the web is such that the site which looks and works best gets the most traffic, developers and designers put a premium on the presentation of that content and let structural markup take a back seat.

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same.

Articles themselves are condensed to narrow columns of text across 5, 6, 7 pages, and ads that are really distracting for the reader, so it's not a pleasant experience to 'curl up' with a good website.

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.

The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Ultimately progress is measured sort of through the eyes of users.

I'm more user-experience and technology-minded. James is good at knowing what the user is going to buy, and the creative world he's buying them into.

If a whole bunch of users want a specific feature, and we think that feature is pretty cool, too, that that's just what we'll do.

If our web be framed with rotten handles, when our loom is well nigh done, our work is new to begin. God send the weaver true prentices again, and let them be denizens.

Real web designers write code. Always have, always will.

In design it is important to shoe the effect of an action. ... Feedback is critical.

The strategy of Tumblr is very elegant.. The atomic unit of user experience is the same as the ads.

I have to match wits with the ads. Like, there's pop-ups that, like, move around and you have to chase them like it was a video game or something. And then there's ads where, like, you know, the X to, like, close the ad screen is so kind of small that you can't find it and you have to actually go looking for it. And so I spend all my energy - instead of, like, absorbing what the advertiser wants to communicate to me, I spend my energy trying to figure out how to defeat the ad.

Providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

My videos are coming from the perspective of someone who bought the device, used it and is giving impressions on the actual usage. Sometimes 2 different behind-the-scenes engienering decisions will yield the same user experience, in which case I won't even mention it.

You can never take too much care over the choice of your shoes.

If I learned one thing working at Facebook: If users are trying to use your app in a certain way, get out of their way and let them.

Design is about crafting an experience that is unfamiliar enough to feel novel, yet familiar enough to instill confidence.

The main thing I want to do, is to make our website the most entertaining website there is on the Internet. I want it to be the premiere site for entertainment, for communication, and for fun.

Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design.