Jef Raskin Quotes

People appreciate a good product, a stable system. They want to communicate easily and use a product that just works.

I think a beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly.

At the end of the day, what matters is whether your product works and whether people like it.

What users want is convenience and results.

Products have to be designed in a way that they are comprehensible.

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.

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 think what really people want is just a few things done really, really well. And if you think about ever day of your life, the things you really appreciate aren't the complicated things. They're the simple things that work just the way you expect them to.

People are looking for more than a faster and faster PC. It has to do what they want. Will it fill some void, add some value, deliver something that they can't do previously at a price that people are willing to pay for?

The most reliable appliance has simplicity and quality, does what is demanded of it, is economical to use, easy to maintain, and just as easy to repair. ...It also sells best and looks good.

I just think things should work properly.

Design means being good, not just looking good.

I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it.

A well-conceived product excels at what it does. It's close to being functionally flawless - like a Ziploc bag, a radio from Tivoli Audio, a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, a Nespresso coffee maker or Google's home page.

Form must never trump function. Some objects are made to look so smooth, you don't know where to pick them up or how to turn them on. If I'm designing a garlic press or cheese grater, I need my hand to fit comfortably on it. I like to know, instinctively, how to use it.

The average user doesn't give a damn what happens, as long as (1) it works and (2) it's fast.

Good design to me is both appearance and functionality together. It's the experience that makes it good design.

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

Reducing a product's definition to a list of features and functions ignores the real opportunity - orchestrating technological capability to serve human needs and goals.

There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.

I think the first things that are relevant are that things should work well; they should function.

Simplicity is hard to build, easy to use, and hard to charge for. Complexity is easy to build, hard to use, and easy to charge for.

Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

We focus a lot on the quality of experience, speed, reliability. It’s not sexy from a lot of people’s perspective, it’s not glitzy in the feature set, but it’s what people come to rely on.