Jason Fried Quotes

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.

At Stanford, we teach 'design thinking' - that is, we put together small, interdisciplinary groups to figure out what the true needs are and then to apply the art of engineering to serve them.

The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that also becomes useful . . . Great designers also pursue a mission. Great designers design with mankind in mind . . . The crossroads of science and art, innovation and inspiration are what I love about design.

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.

With thought, all problems can be resolved.

You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.

I was just taught very early that if I didn't solve problems, I was headed for a very dark path. Problems were everywhere. Now, even if there are no problems, I look for problems. I'm like, 'You know what? I don't like the way this spoon works. I want to design a new spoon.'

Architects often have a mindset where you solve a problem, so you have a set of needs that you have to address. Often I feel that my projects have to have concrete applications.

I think taking design out of the studio and really having a relationship with the people that you're making it for really convinced me of how powerful a thing design is. It's not just an aesthetic decoration.

If you write your own tools, you can sort of see new things, design new things.

Health care is a design problem. Dependence on foreign oil is a design problem. To some extent, poverty is a design problem. We need design thinkers to solve those problems, and most people who are in positions of political power are not design thinkers, to put it mildly.

I want to reiterate the fact that at the core of it all, I am a designer, a creator, and as a creative person, I will choose to be limitless in the extension models of my various ideas on design.

I apply the term 'creativity' broadly... it's problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that's where creativity comes in.

I give people ideas on how to solve intractable problems.

Creativity can solve almost any problem.

A 'problem' is nothing more than a gorgeous opportunity to discover an even better solution.

We still seek to solve conflicts with 'judgement' instead of designing the way forwards.

We need to be in the open mode when we are pondering a problem, but, once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it.

How do we attack important problems? Pose the right question.

I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.

Usually, the main problem with life conundrums is that we don't bring to them enough imagination

So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

A good designer can create a design that accommodates all the constraints and still delivers an elegant, satisfying experience to the user. A great designer can go beyond this and create a design that demonstrates that some of those constraints weren’t really there to begin with.