Quotes About Design

Standardization is indeed the fundamental principle of desperation: when no other solution appears possible, simply design everything the same way, so people only have to learn once.

the proper natural mapping requires no diagrams, no labels, and no instructions.

Los errores deben ser fáciles de detectar, deben tener unas consecuencias mínimas y, de ser posible, sus efectos deben ser reversibles.

If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed. And if the system induces you to make the error, then it is really badly designed.

Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding. Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them? Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?

Why do people err? Because the designs focus upon the requirements of the system and the machines, and not upon the requirements of people.

Attractive things certainly should be preferred over ugly ones, but why would they work better? Yet in the early 1990s, two Japanese researchers, Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura, claimed just that.

attractive things make people feel good, which in turn makes them think more creatively. How does that make something easier to use? Simple, by making it easier for people to find solutions to the problems they encounter.

Effective design needs to satisfy a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasure of the appearance, the pride of ownership, and the joy of actual use. HCD is a procedure for addressing these requirements, but with an emphasis on two things: solving the right problem, and doing so in a way that meets human needs and capabilities.

Affordances, signifiers, mappings, and constraints can simplify our encounters with everyday objects. Failure to properly deploy these cues leads to problems.

Attractive things do work better—their attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative, more tolerant of minor difficulties. The three levels of processing lead to three corresponding forms of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Each plays a critical role in human behavior, each an equally critical role in the design, marketing, and use of products.

when a device as simple as a door has to have a sign telling you whether to pull, push, or slide, then it is a failure, poorly designed.

A usable design starts with careful observations of how the tasks being supported are actually performed, followed by a design process that results in a good fit to the actual ways the tasks get performed. The technical name for this method is task analysis. The name for the entire process is human-centered design (HCD), discussed

When many people all have the same problem, shouldn't another cause be found? If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed. And if the system induces you to make the error, then it is really badly designed.

Visceral design is what nature does.

It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people.

Good designers worry a lot about the physical feel of their products. Physical touch and feel can make a huge difference in your appreciation of their creations. Consider the delights of smooth, polished metal, or soft leather, or a soil ...

Engineers and designers who believe they do not need to watch the people who use their products are a major source of the many poor designs that confront us.

Great designers produce pleasurable experiences.

we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors.

The major areas of design relevant to this book are industrial design, interaction design, and experience design. None of the fields is well defined, but the focus of the efforts does vary, with industrial designers emphasizing form and material, interactive designers emphasizing understandability and usability, and experience designers emphasizing the emotional impact.

What are the design implications? Don't count on much being retained in STM. Computer systems often enhance people's frustration when things go wrong by presenting critical information in a message that then disappears from the display just when the person wishes to make use of the information. So how can people remember the critical information? I am not surprised when people hit, kick, or otherwise attack their computers.

When a bridge collapses, we analyze the incident to find the causes of the collapse and reformulate the design rules to ensure that form of accident will never happen again. When we discover that electronic equipment is malfunctioning because it is responding to unavoidable electrical noise, we redesign the circuits to be more tolerant of the noise. But when an accident is thought to be caused by people, we blame them and then continue to do things just as we have always done.

The solution is human-centered design (HCD), an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving.