Quotes from Alan Cooper

The key to solving the problem is interaction design before programming.

Infinite scrolling should never be employed for interfaces in which users need to get to the end of the list quickly, or need to return to a particular list item after navigating elsewhere.

Programmers become so familiar with code reuse that they often copy existing techniques even when they aren't actually copying code.

The programmers went off and coded for a while, then brought the finished work to Jeff for him to try. He found a book he wanted and pressed the 1-Click button, whereupon the program asked him a confirming question! The programmers had converted his one-click interface into a two-click interface.

Design Is a Big Word

Public kiosks run an unfortunate risk of being a disease vector, so your first pass should try for noncontact inputs like voice, proximity switches, or non-contact gestural inputs. If

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.

E-mail is the most influential application ever to appear on a personal computer, and it remains sadly deficient.

We're building what I call 'software apartheid.' We're in the process of creating a divided society: those who can use technology on one side, and those who can't on the other. And it happens to divide neatly along economic lines.

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.

A lot of people think, and Microsoft is happy to let them think, that all great things are invented by Microsoft. In fact, very, very little has been invented by Microsoft.

Men do not greet one another like this ... except perhaps at rugby club dinners.

You Don't Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted!

I have a cell phone that doesn't behave like a phone: It behaves like a computer that makes calls. Computers are becoming an integral part of daily life. And if people don't start designing them to be more user-friendly, then an even larger part of the population is going to be left out of even more stuff.

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

Design is not so much a design issue as a power struggle.

What Microsoft is really good at is endlessly iterating and revving - incrementally improving things that already exist - and those things that already exist are generally acquired from the outside.

While making art you should just do what is in your heart.

The payoff of a customer-centric approach to software and digital product design is substantial and long-lasting for both companies and their customers.

Computers no longer interface with humans--they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival.

No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it.

If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.

Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.

Define what the product will do before you design how the product will do it.