quote archives
“Leaders inspire. Managers require.”A participant at the George Wythe University Statesmanship Retreat last weekend, commenting on the difference between leadership and management. Not to say that good managers can’t also inspire—but when they do, that is when they Lead instead of merely Manage. Also, you can lead without being a manager—something good designers do every day.
“Theater…is a process where you iterate, you see what works, you try it in rehearsal, and then you make changes, and then you try it again.”Jared Spool makes an interesting connection between User Experience and The Theater. From a 2005 Interview by Peter Merholz .
“Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.Seth Godin, The sad lie of mediocrity
Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.”
“For now, we should just be happy that Windows 7 appears to be on the right track. You can almost look at consumer-level Windows—that is, 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and Win 7—like the first six Star Trek movies: They pretty reliably alternate between crap and quality.”Summarizing paragraph of the review of Windows 7 by Gizmodo. As soon as they brought up the Star Trek movies I knew just where they were going. Does that make me a geek, or does that make it a great analogy? Anyway, I use Windows at home, and am simply looking forward to an OS that gets out of my way. Hopefully they can deliver this time.
“Embracing the word “ugly”—so readily identified with everything popular design claims to have been a reaction against—seems a logical choice if we are to create a vision for the practice of design freed from the restrictions and prejudices of its past.”Tad Toulis makes an argument for Ugly, suggesting that our pre-conceived ideas about beauty and aesthetics may be a dogma that is actually holding us back. Great read from Core 77.
“Interaction Design (IxD) is a reverse blanket term that describes how people apply many theories in psychology and physiology, including Heuristics, Cybernetics, Ergonomics, Planning Theory, and even more disparate fields dealing with Audio and Visual design.Read in a discussion at interactiondesigners.com. The members are discussing the difference between Interface Design and Interaction Design.
To reduce that. Interface Design is about where buttons appear on a page, and what those buttons look like. IxD is whether or not that page needs to exist at all.
Or
Interface Design will tell you how best to ask a user for his address, IxD will tell you to harvest it from somewhere that you already have it stored.
Or
Interface Designers design interfaces, IxDs design ways to avoid them.”
“If web standards ever get a foothold, I’m hosed.”Pete, reflecting on his future relevance once his days of
gratuitous browser wrestling are over.
“In the Shaker world, the appearance of a thing or person mattered only to the extent that it revealed its underlying function. Whatever did not interfere with function, served function. This is different from saying that whatever did not serve function interfered with function.”A few weeks ago, Kaleb posted a bit about the Shaker Design Philosophy. This post inspired me to look back through the book Shaker Built where I found this subtle shift in thinking. Thinking this way about your designs allows you to create something simple without being plain. It also allows the artist or designer an incredible amount of freedom within what may otherwise be considered hefty constraints. As long as a design element doesn’t interfere with the essential function, there can be an argument to keep it, even if it doesn’t serve any purpose itself.
“Great rock stars would be lousy designers, lacking the discipline and respect that is needed to accomplish effective communication. I still have absolutely no idea what Kurt Cobain was trying to convey, specifically.”Nathan Ford, decrying the use of “rockstar” to describe a top-notch designer. Instead, he suggests that a “master composer” is the better musical analogy.
“In the era of the Numerati, designers may have to tradeDmitri Siegel with Design Observer, discussing Stephen Baker’s new book The Numerati.
the glory of fashioning great monuments of design
for the pursuit of a fulfilling creative process.”
“Graphic design is an organic process that uses type and image to create a visual solution for a communication problem. Much like leaves make up the shape of a tree, a graphic design solution is made up of many elements working together to create the whole. Research and knowledge are at the root of design. Formats and grids offer structure—the branches. But it is the smallest elements of design—the letterforms—which bring a design to life.”Thoughts on Leaves & Letters, a leaflet from Vangool Design & Typography
“Barack Hussein Obama is no more a terrorist than George Walker Bush is a device used to help old people get around independently”Andy Zaltzman, via Coudal
“If people don’t see it, make it bigger.Tongue in cheek, Luke W paraphrasing the design mantra of those who don’t know how to really implement a visual hierarchy, today at UIE 13 . How many of you out there have heard those actual words? More than I’d like to think…
If you can’t make it any bigger, make it bold.
If you can’t make it any bolder, make it red.”
“Turn off your internal problem-solver and just listen to people.”Indi Young explaining her genius approach to usability in the lastest A List Apart
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”Jazz composer and bassist, Charles Mingus
“A ‘perfectionist’ and a ‘purist’ are not the same person. The perfectionist seeks to do everything to the best of their ability against standards that are often set higher than average. The purist, on the other hand, seeks to adhere to some set of rules that are written for conditions in a world wherein Tom Cruise is taller and a lot less creepy, and every morning the box of Trix is full and fresh without all those lame crumb particles at the bottom of the box.”Greg Storey recounting an incident between (perfectionist) Dan Cederholm and a (purist) follower of Dan
“The brand is what you tell your friends about afterwards.”Mark Hurst of Good Experience, in one of the most concise and useful definitions of “branding” I think I’ve ever heard.
“In order to better understand [the elderly’s] experience I have bought a pair of ski gloves and some reading glasses (I don’t need reading glasses). Every now and again, I surf the site I am designing wearing both the glasses and gloves. The glasses make the screen hard to read while the gloves hamper my use of the mouse and the keyboard. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to select something from a drop down menuFrom Paul Boag in Boagworld podcast episode 130,
wearing ski gloves!”
and originally found on Web Axe.
“We like looking five-years ahead because it gets beyond the immediate reactive requirements and starts considering what a great experience could be. If we only looked one year ahead, we’d be stuck with the current realities. If we look too far out, we get into the realm of science fiction.”Spool, explaining why one of the three key questions for experience design teams is whether they can articulate what the user experience will be in 5 years. Good article, if you’re in an introspective mood… I think me and my current team make the grade on 2 of the 3 questions… How ‘bout you?
“There are two types of people in the world:Grubing Fireball, on the new iPhone-ready Flickr.
those who can’t tell the difference between
Arial and Helvetica, and those who despise Arial.”