User Centered Design 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.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

I fervently believe in research as a necessity for good design, and I teach it that way.

You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.

The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.

This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.

The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.

Design is nothing if not decision making.

If you need to take a step back from day-to-day operations and plot out the long-term direction of your user experience strategy, consultants can give you a perspective you can't get on your own.

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.

Design has to work. Art does not.

You must have the ability to recognize good design and good user experience. These are core things at Airbnb. It doesn't matter which department you're in.

Design means being good, not just looking good.

In design it is important to shoe the effect of an action. ... Feedback is critical.

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.

Simplicity design axiom: The complexity of the information appliance is that of the task, not the tool. The technology is invisible.

I take a lean-startup approach: creating agile, interdisciplinary teams that get the minimum viable product to market as soon as possible. It's my job to be entrepreneur-in-residence, an internal change agent.

Good design, at least part of the time, includes the criterion of being direct in relation to the problem at hand - not obscure, trendy, or stylish. A new language, visual or verbal, must be couched in a language that is already understood.

If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.

When we think of design, we usually imagine things that are chosen because they are designed. Vases or comic books or architecture... It turns out, though, that most of what we make or design is actually aimed at a public that is there for something else. The design is important, but the design is not the point. Call it "public design"... Public design is for individuals who have to fill out our tax form, interact with our website or check into our hotel room despite the way it's designed, not because of it.

A design isn't finished until someone is using it.

One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is a radical simplification of the interface.

You are not designing for yourself, and shouldn't be. Most people using the Web don't understand (most of) what makes it work and don't want to. Design for those people. There are many more of them than you.

I am always looking for ways to move technology away from being over-featured. Moving to Silicon Valley in the mid-1990s meant I grew up as a designer in an environment where technology is a tool and not a means to an end. I believe that design should be driven by ideas, not style.

Ultimately progress is measured sort of through the eyes of users.