Quotes About Usability

The user interface is so easy to use, I can't do anything.

I want a UI that is so simple that drunks can use it and ADDs won't be distracted away.

The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.

I wrote a lot about the need for an information appliance. I think we've pretty much arrived at one: the iPad. A child could figure out how to use it quickly. Compare it to a DOS computer or even an Apple II; it's no longer nearly as much of a hassle or a mystery.

An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties.

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.

Grossman correctly noted that the iPhone did not really invent many new features, it just made these features a lot more usable. "But that's important. When our tools don't work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. . . . When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.

The less concerned with aesthetics and usability these friends and family members are, the more easily they navigate sites and applications I can't make head nor hair of. Like the ex-girlfriend who mastered Ebay.

There's no such thing as a dumb user. … There are only dumb products.

Browseability is the key online.

central concern of interaction design is to develop interactive products that are usable. By this we mean products that are generally easy to learn, effective to use, and provide an enjoyable user experience.

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

The Internet didn't become usable until Netscape because that gave the average person a user interface that was intuitive, simple, friendly - this made it accessible.

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

It doesn't matter how good your product solution is if users don't enjoy or understand how to use it.

Attractive things work better.

I suspect few housing projects in the US were designed by architects who expected to live in them. You see the same thing in programming languages. C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for their own designers to use. Cobol, Ada, and Javawere created for other people to use. If you think you're designing something for idiots, odds are you're not designing something good, even for idiots.

The aesthetic-usability effect describes a phenomenon in which people perceive more-aesthetic designs as easier to use than less-aesthetic designs—whether they are or not.

Simplicity is achieved when everyone can easily understand and use the design, regardless of experience, literacy, or concentration level.

The intelligence with which engineers design a product dramatically impacts how easy or difficult it will be for the typical consumer to use it effectively.

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.

Usability is like oxygen -- you never notice it until it is missing...

When designers replaced the command line interface with the graphical user interface, billions of people who are not programmers could make use of computer technology.

We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users.