“Human-centered approaches to industrial and interaction design have long focused on studying human behavior to create informed and appropriate designs. A social interaction designer must consider not only people, environment, and existing tools, but also the unseen elements of the system such as social relationships, power dynamics, and cultural rules.” – Gentry Underwood
Read more in Gentry’s article “Social Software: The other ‘Design for Social Impact’.”
“Accept—quietly and implicitly—that your work will affect millions. Focus on the nuances and details of the craft itself, and on your capacity to engage in a conversation with your work. Through this will come humble and beautiful design solutions that will live on, affect culture, and change behavior. And through this will come a sense of subdued pleasure in your creative work.” – Jon Kolko
Read more from Jon in his interactions magazine article “On Hopelessness and Hope.” In this article Jon argues that successful design may come from those who focus more on designing for deep impact, rather than on broad high level strategic solutions.
“Designers are gifted with a certain perspective of the world that can cause much frustration and wonderment. The average person doesn’t have the filters in place to see when they have been ignored by the product they are using. Occasionally, people can tell when something wasn’t designed, but they normally deal with the damages done physically, mentally, and socially. In an attempt to stop the pain, designers create interactions that look to discourage undesirable behavior and promote desirable behavior.” – Brad Nunnally
Read more from Brad in his article “Are We The Puppet Masters?”
“Understanding is important, but it’s only the beginning. It’s got to lead to a change in behavior. The question interaction designers need to ask ourselves, then, is this: how can our work help people to not only understand the change needed, but also to begin making it?” – Tom Igoe
Tom’s quote is from a panel he and Robert Fabricant were on that discussed sustainable interaction design. Robert cited this quote in his IxDA Interaction 9 video “Behavior is our Medium.”
Thanks to Dave Malouf for pointing me to this video!
“The behavior you’re seeing is the behavior you’ve designed for (whether intentional or not).” – Joshua Porter
This quote is from Joshua’s presentation “Designing for Social Traction.”
Quote submitted by Robert Shedd. Do you have a quote you want to see on inspireUX? Submit it, and it may be chosen!
“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”
Catriona Cornett
