Dieter Rams Quotes

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

If you don't have an emotionally engaging design for a device, no one will care about it.

We have always thought about design as being so much more than just the way something looks. It's the whole thing: the way something works on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience.

Good design makes a product understandable.

There's a fundamental problem with how the software business does things. We're asking people who are masters of hard-edged technology to design the soft, human side of software as well. As a result, they make products that are really cool - if you happen to be a software engineer.

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

I had given a presentation on design and happiness for quite a long while at design conferences. I had found thinking about the topic helpful for my own practice, as it forced me to consider the fundamentals, and the feedback from the audience was always enthusiastic.

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.

CSS is the design language of the web, and it is not as easy to use as it ought to be, and it can be confusing, especially if you are new to it.

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

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

When I design, I think about the desire someone might have for it and why. I want them to fall in love with it.

Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.

Simple and intuitive design is what inspires and drives me.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.

I've always been a proponent of the idea that technology doesn't matter to game design. The example I always like to point out is 'Tetris,' one of the greatest games ever made.

Accessible design is good design.

Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.

I do believe that there are some universal cognitive tasks that are deep and profound - indeed, so deep and profound that it is worthwhile to understand them in order to design our displays in accord with those tasks.

Things that are ultimately complex must have a simple end user experience if they are to be successful.

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

I could open a thousand Excel documents and still never think to scroll past a wall of empty rows to see if, hidden beneath them, there is a tab I need to click. Just doesn't occur to me. Because, design.

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.

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.