John Maeda Quotes

Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era.

I not only enjoy it, I think, how do you design things that are applicable to life - unless you live it?

The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help.

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.

Integrating breakthrough technology into everyday products is always a challenge; at the same time, this is exactly how design makes tech products easily adoptable in life.

I ended up going to do a matches program at the state for industrial design. And from there, I got hired at IDEO to joint their design team there - and basically, you are starting as an industrial designer to design products - and then kept asking the question, 'What else can design accomplish? What else can design do?'

We are often celebrating technology and codes, but we don't really think about the creative side.

I think the Macintosh was created by a group of people who felt that ah there wasn't a strict vision between sort of science and art.

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.

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

It's not enough to have a hacker culture anymore. You have to have a design culture, too.

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.

I specialise in taking teams of designers, psychologists, usability experts, sociologists and ethnographers into the field. It's called 'corporate anthropology,' but personally I'm more comfortable with 'design research,' because I'm not an anthropologist by training.

The best design work is really done when you spend more time with people, when you have the opportunity to be of the same mindset and the same incentives as the founder of the business.

The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.

Design is people.

My focus is incredibly narrow. I can't talk with any authority other than design and development of product.

To me, 'design thinking' is another way of saying empathize with the customer. It's consideration for the person you're designing for.

I like to think about the future and how things can be done better than they are now. That's what engineers do.

What I believe is that Nintendo is a very unique company because it does its business by designing and introducing people to hardware and software - by integrating them, we can be unique.

Socialcam shares Autodesk's mission of helping everybody imagine, design, and create a better world.

I love to see technology from a design perspective and vice versa. I am a 'Desigineer.'

I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

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