“Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions. Bad websites have horrible personalities and instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly. We need to design things–products, websites, services–to convey whatever personality and emotions are desired.” – Don Norman

Read more in Don’s interview with Johnny Holland: “Design Research and Innovation.”

1. Design products that appeal to both cognition and emotion for a competitive advantage
2. Prototyping has given us the power to show and tell the story of our design solutions
3. Design is really about the way products and services come to life

“Products were once designed for the functions they performed. But when all companies can make products that perform their functions equally well, the distinctive advantage goes to those who provide pleasure and enjoyment while maintaining the power. If functions are equated with cognition, pleasure is equated with emotion; today we want products that appeal to both cognition and emotion.” – Don Norman

Read more in Don’s Interactions Magazine article “The Transmedia Design Challenge Technology that is Pleasurable and Satisfying.”

1. Today we want products that appeal to both cognition and emotion
2. We need to build products that bring joy and excitement to people’s lives
3. Your products run for election every day

“Products were once designed for the functions they performed. But when all companies can make products that perform their functions equally well, the distinctive advantage goes to those who provide pleasure and enjoyment while maintaining the power. If functions are equated with cognition, pleasure is equated with emotion; today we want products that appeal to both cognition and emotion.” – Don Norman

This quote is from Don’s article “The Transmedia Design Challenge: Technology that is Pleasurable and Satisfying”

1. Design products that appeal to both cognition and emotion for a competitive advantage
2. We need to build products that bring joy and excitement to people’s lives
3. Deeply understanding customers allows companies to develop products that revolutionize the way we live our lives

“If you think of the product as a service, then the separate parts make no sense – the point of a product is to offer great experiences to its owner, which means that it offers a service. And that experience, that service, comprises the totality of its parts: The whole is indeed made up of all of the parts. The real value of a product consists of far more than the product’s components.” – Don Norman

Read more in Don’s article “Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product.”

1. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences.
2. Startups that “get” UX and design are likely create a more successful product than those that do not
3. A coherent product user interface is the product to users

“No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service – from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly. That’s systems thinking.” – Don Norman

Read more from Don in his article “Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product”.

1. The real value of a product consists of far more than the product’s components
2. Teamwork and collaboration make great user experiences possible
3. What makes people passionate, pure and simple, is great experiences

“Attractive things work better… When you wash and wax a car, it drives better, doesn’t it? Or at least feels like it does.” – Don Norman

This quote is from the article “The Secret of Apple Design” by Technology Review. This site requires a login to read the full article. Read more from Don on this subject in his paper “Attractive Things Work Better.” (PDF)

Thanks to Robert Shedd for submitting this quote!

1. A work of art is realized when form and content are indistinguishable
2. Make something people want to integrate into their lives
3. Designs should be informed, but not solely determined by user experience data.

“It’s the total experience that matters. And that starts from when you first hear about a product… experience is more based upon memory than reality. If your memory of the product is wonderful, you will excuse all sorts of incidental things.” – Don Norman

Don’s quote is from an interview conducted at UX Week 2008. Read some other choice quotes from this interview here. This quote was submitted by Michael Cummings.

Please help inspireUX maintain a frequent quote posting frequency by submitting your favorite UX quotes. Thank you!

1. Experience design has human engagement as an explicit goal
2. User experience is the summation of considerations across UX disciplines
3. User experience is the center of gravity of a project

“It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives.” – Don Norman

This quote is from Don’s article “Introduction to This Special Section on Beauty, Goodness, and Usability” from the publication “Human-Computer Interaction”

(EDIT: URL to the article has been updated.  Click on the “View Article” link on that page to view the PDF)

1. It’s not good enough to just be usable. Design has to fit into peoples’ lives.
2. Deeply understanding customers allows companies to develop products that revolutionize the way we live our lives
3. Products are the gateway to a plethora of experiences

“I think a successful company is one where everybody owns the same mission. Out of necessity, we divide ourselves up into discipline groups. But the goal when you are actually doing the work is to somehow forget what discipline group you are in and come together. So in that sense, nobody should own user experience; everybody should own it.” – Don Norman

Read more from an interview with Don Norman on where user experience should be positioned within a company in this article.

1. Creating a successful product requires designing the Total User Experience
2. Design needs to reflect the innovation culture of a company
3. Experience is more based upon memory than reality

“The argument is not between adding features and simplicity, between adding capability and usability. The real issue is about design: designing things that have the power required for the job while maintaining understandability, the feeling of control, and the pleasure of accomplishment.” – Don Norman

Read Don’s article “Simplicity is Not the Answer” for more thoughts on the importance of making understandable designs.

1. The goal of human-centered design is to tame complexity
2. We need to build products that bring joy and excitement to people’s lives
3. The measure of quality in web design should be graceful transformation