“Good information architecture makes users less alienated and suppressed by technology. It simultaneously increases human satisfaction and your company’s profits. Very few jobs allow you to do both at the same time, so enjoy.” - Jakob Nielsen in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville

Make sure you pick up Information Architecture for the World Wide Web if you’re an information architect or are interested in information architecture.

“When we’re trying to understand our ‘users’ and ‘customers,’ we have to remember that they’re people just like us, and just like us they regularly cross understood boundaries and categories… People are inconsistent, often inarticulate, and they challenge social and cultural boundaries in unexpected ways.” - Subject to Change by Peter Merholz, Brandon Schauer, David Verba, and Todd Wilkens

Subject to Change by four great folks at Adaptive Path is a fabulous look at customer experience and how focusing on it can transform companies. I highly recommend it!

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality” - Walt Disney

Read Bruce Temkin’s thoughts on this quote and how it relates to customer experience in general here

“We shouldn’t assume that the general viewing public is an idiot.  We should try to evolve the medium by making intuitive systems that educate the user - not design to what level we think they can handle” - Joshua Davis

“Interaction design isn’t only about fixing problems; it’s also about facilitating interactions between people in richer, deeper, better ways - that is, finding new ways to better connect human beings to one another, and by doing so, make the world a better place to live” - Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer

Check out Dan’s book Designing for Interaction for a great overview of interaction design

“Being customer focused is not some ‘nice thing to do.’ Customer focus is about hard-edged business. Customers are hugely impatient on the Web. They don’t need to hang around a website that is not directly focused on them. Customer focus is the beginning, middle and end of a successful web strategy.” - Gerry McGovern

Read UIE’s interview with Gerry McGovern, “The Importance of a Customer-Centric Design Approach,” here

“Your customers are not you. They don’t look like you, they don’t think like you, they don’t do the things that you do, they don’t have your expectations or assumptions. If they did, they wouldn’t be your customers; they’d be your competitors.” - Mike Kuniavsky of Adaptive Path

“While market researchers describe how the world is, creative people describe how it could be. Their thinking is often so fresh that they zag even when they should zig. But without fresh thinking, there’s no chance of magic” - The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

Check out Marty’s book The Brand Gap. Great quick read to understand branding and its power