“As designers we must remember that behavior comes first. Always. The quirky, the obscure, the vain, the annoying, the wonderful. We need to observe human behavior if we are to support it in design.” – Joshua Porter
Read more about the importance of understanding your users’ behavior in Joshua’s artilce “Behavior First, Design Second”
“A design is intuitive when people just know what to do and they don’t have to go through any training to get there… When a design is not intuitive, our attention moves away from what we’re trying to accomplish to how we can get the interface to accomplish what we want.” – Jared Spool
This quote is from Jared’s excellent presentation entitled “What Makes a Design Seem Intuitive?” given at the joint PhillyCHI and UsabilityNJ meeting on July 15, 2009.
“Be someone else. It takes great empathy to create a good experience. To create relevant experiences, you have to forget everything you know and design for others. Align with the expected patience, level of interest, and depth of knowledge of your users. Talk in the users’ language.” – Niko Nyman
This quote is from Niko’s presentation entitled “The Value of User Experience”.
“The people in business must understand what they can achieve with designers. Designers have to understand that they really must deliver to business not just beautification, or another form of it, but substantial change.” – Hartmut Esslinger
This quote is from a video interview with Hartmut, frog design founder and former CEO.
“Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They’re able to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and society and convert those changes into objects and ideas that people can understand.” – Paola Antonelli
Read more from Paola in her article “Core Principles” from Seed Magazine. Also, check out Paola’s other quotes on inspireUX.
“User Experience Design is not data-driven, it’s insight-driven. Data is just raw material for insight… We have to be able to do both: use data to inform the fullest possible understanding of the behavior and context of potential users, as well as bring our own experience and talent to the challenge.” – Andrew Hinton
Read more from Andrew, a fellow Vanguard Information Architect, co-founder of the IAI, and overall awesome person, in his article “Data vs. Insight for UX Design.”