Steven Johnson Quotes

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.

We want to continue to explore new possibilities regarding interface and interaction. We experiment different solutions to make interface an important component for immersion rather than just a remote control.

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

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.

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

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.

I have problems with machines which aren't gestural.

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

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.

Information design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the Internet, it's having something of a second birth.

I have always been interested in exploring how we can leverage our knowledge about everyday objects, and how we use them, in order to interact with our digital world.

Design helps shape our everyday interactions through products, furniture, objects, or experiences.

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

I am confident that we can do better than GUIs because the basic problem with them (and with the Linux and Unix interfaces) is that they ask a human being to do things that we know experimentally humans cannot do well. The question I asked myself is, given everything we know about how the human mind works, could we design a computer and computer software so that we can work with the least confusion and greatest efficiency?

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.

The fusion of art and technology that we call interface design.

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.'

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

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

I do a little fact checking now and then. Other than that its impact is simply that email has revolutionized communication for me, and my website has built up a community of readers, which is a lot of fun.

What is design? It's where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes - and you try to bring the two together.

I think Google should be like a Swiss Army knife: clean, simple, the tool you want to take everywhere.

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

Design is people.