Quotes & Sayings About Design Thinking

Clothes can be important. I am learning this. For instance, often when I design and I wonder what is the point, I think of someone having a bad time in their life. — Miuccia Prada

Steve Jobs did not start started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. He believed in making people comfortable with these machines, which is why he spent so much time thinking about how to design them a certain way, how to make them so user-friendly and interactive, and why he spent so much time studying the Zeitgeist. — Alex Gibney

All those years of skating and dancing have carried over. I can't design anything without thinking of how a woman's body will look and move when she's wearing it. — Vera Wang

We don't think of ourselves as being perfectionists, really. To us it's more about desperately trying to have it sound more or less OK. — Donald Fagen

O Lazy bones! Dost thou think God would have given thee arms and legs, if he had not design'd thou should'st use them? — Benjamin Franklin

The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong. — Marty Neumeier

I don't consider what you're wearing when I design a shoe. I don't have a particular look in mind or make a shoe thinking, "This would look great with a blue pinstripe suit." I just let you dress yourself. I'm looking at the shoe itself, not as a component of an outfit. — Mark McNairy

If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design. — Ralf Speth

I was doing a lot of web design at the time. And anybody that has an agent thinks, "Why do I need an agent?" Maybe it's a little different as an actor - of course you need an agent - but any kind of agency that's selling something for you, you think, "Why can't I sell this myself? It doesn't make sense." — Jeff Vespa

Life, by which I mean my life, is a great, or probably the greatest, design, from its very beginning to its end, the end that, I think, is unlikely to exist. Each and every bit of life is a part of the design. Design exists as the consequence of the ultimate questioner's vanity. And my mission is to find the most fundamental truth, which probably and exclusively involves the nature of the existence of the ultimate questioner. — Kedar Joshi

Reflection is an underlining theme of Design Thinking. — Pearl Zhu

Think 8 hours, work 2 hours. — Mirko Ilic

Before I could process the question, from the back side was a soft 'snick" as the cross was adjusted to my height and the ankle clamps latched down. My hands were free, but I wasn't going anywhere. My gasp must have been audible as this was not part of my design, but I was thinking I needed to have mine re-fitted. — Abyrne Mostyn

Why is composing symphonies tough? I don't know. It's just very few people in the world can do it well. And I think that's the case with upfront design. It is very hard to do well. — Martin Fowler

Business culture operates differently in different cities around the world. But I don't think it's possible to design one system that incorporates all social norms for networking. Human beings are just too diverse. — Danah Boyd

The most common misperception is the word 'design'. People think of primarily pretty pictures or forms. They don't understand the depth to which design goes-not only in products, but in every aspect of our life. Whether it is the design of a program, a product or some form of communication, we are living in a world that's totally designed. Somebody made a decision about everything. And it was a design decision. — Sam Farber

The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory. — Arthur Eddington

I don't think that anyone has really told (people) what design is. It doesn't occur to most people that everything is designed
that every building and everything they touch in the world is designed. Even foods are designed now. So in the process of helping people understand this, making them more aware of the fact that the world around us is something that somebody has control of, perhaps they can feel some sense of control, too. I think that's a nice ambition. — Bill Moggridge

Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started sitting in your little room — Jack White

The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design. — Jonathan Ive

Whatever the trend might be, I'm thinking of the Woman for whom I'm designing it. — Stuart Weitzman

I try to think and design in color. — Nelson Shanks

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual. — Edward Tufte

Creativity is to think more efficiently. — Pierre Reverdy

I don't think the shortage of artists has much to do with the innate ability to create or initiate. I think it has to do with believing that it's possible and acceptable for you to do it. We've had these doors open wide for only a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it. — Seth Godin

I don't think you make fans happy by just replicating frames. What they want to see is that you stayed true to the story, true to the characters and true to the design. — Sylvain White

Remember, the web isn't about control. If a visitor to your site is familiar with using a browser's native form doodad, you won't be doing them any favors if you override the browser functionality with your own widget, even if you think your widget looks better. — Jeremy Keith

Think about the market, think about the design, and think about who is going to design for that market. Hit the mark. — Tom Peters

Design is thinking made visual. — Saul Bass

In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture ... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair. — Thomas Nagel

With everything that I design, from a church to a plate to skyscraper to a spoon. I am always thinking about voluptuous volumes and spaces. — Greg Lynn

Is this not precisely how the universe should look if fantasied by a defiled overmind? Is this not exactly how the universe should be presented if shaped by the careful hand of pure but unforgivingly patient malevolence? Who but the immaculate embodiment of malice would design such a contemptible thing? Indeed, is not the vulgarity of scale proof of an Omnimalevolent Creator, greater even than the finely tuned universe itself? Only a thoroughly corrupted, wicked mind could conceive of such impossible proportions and be in possession of the boorish inclination needed to then dangle such an offense to all reasonableness in front of the eyes of a curious explorer - a tiny, living, thinking organic vessel whom through tuning and coercion the Creator had ensured would one day rise to stare out longingly from the shores of their home-world prison. — John Zande

I think with my hands. I design things to be touched-not for a museum. A piece is ready when it has the shape of something to cherish. — Eva Zeisel

What I've learned from different designers is that it's key to be true to who you are and your vision. That's always been my line of thinking. Working through the whole design process, I don't want to create something I wouldn't be proud to wear. — Kellan Lutz

I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright's another, Peter Molyneux is another. They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It's a very hard skill to learn. — Richard Garriott

Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness. — Virginia Woolf

Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. — Linus Torvalds

A man often thinks he rules himself, when all the while he is ruled and managed; and while his understanding directs one design, his affections imperceptibly draw him into another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Agile DevOps Cloud computing Design thinking These practices all share a cybernetic model of control. This — Jeff Sussna

I didn't grow up thinking I'd be a decorator. Design is my greatest passion, and it naturally just pulled me down the path. Same with TV. Being famous or having a show was never the motivation. I got a call and was swept up by the challenge of that first small space redesign. — Nate Berkus

Good design, when it's done well, becomes invisible. It's only when it's done poorly that we notice it. Think of it like a room's air conditioning. We only notice it when it's too hot, too cold, making too much noise, or the unit is dripping on us. Yet, if the air conditioning is perfect, nobody say anything and we focus, instead, on the task at hand. — Jared Spool

When you see the right thing, do it - this may look like more work in the short term, but it's the path of least effort in the long run. If you don't know what the right thing is, do the minimum necessary to get the job done, at least until you figure out what the right thing is. To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to be loyal to excellence. You have to believe that software design is a craft worth all the intelligence, creativity, and passion you can muster. Otherwise you won't look past the easy, stereotyped ways of approaching design and implementation; you'll rush into coding when you should be thinking. You'll carelessly complicate when you should be relentlessly simplifying - and then you'll wonder why your code bloats and debugging is so hard. — Eric S. Raymond

I just think of couture clothing as wearable art. So from - to that extent I, you know, I love having the opportunity to just even be able to touch and look at, you know, these pieces of design. In terms of, you know, is it stressful and does it take a lot of time. It's mostly stressful because you're there because you're nominated. — Debra Messing

In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction. — Peter Zumthor

I think nobody would claim that random genetic drift is capable of producing adaptation, that is to say the illusion of design. Random genetic drift can't produce wings that are good at flying, or eyes that are good at seeing, or legs that are good at running. But random genetic drift probably is very important in driving evolution at the molecular genetic level. — Richard Dawkins

If you're more susceptible to interruption, you do more out of the box thinking. — Donald A. Norman

How odd that Americans, and not just their presidents, have come to think of their Constitution as something separable from the government it's supposed to constitute. In theory, it should be as binding on rulers as the laws of physics are on engineers who design bridges; in practice, its axioms have become mere options. Of course engineers don't have to take oaths to respect the law of gravity; reality gives them no choice. Politics, as we see, makes all human laws optional for politicians. — Joseph Sobran

When any great design thou dost intend, Think on the means, the manner, and the end. — John Denham

A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one. — Lord Chesterfield

We're very concerned with language and how language works. We're trying to engage people rather than dictate how they should be thinking. — Neville Brody

Design is thinking made visible. — Unknown

As we begin our study of Genesis 1 then, we must be aware of the danger that lurks when we impose our own cultural ideas on the text without thinking. The Bible's message must not be subjected to cultural imperialism. Its message transcends the culture in which it originated, but the form in which the message was imbedded was fully permeated by the ancient culture. This was God's design and we ignore it at our peril. — John H. Walton

There are a lot of designers who think they understand technology and a lot of technology guys who think they understand design. But to put them together and make it robust and repeatable for the mass market? It's an art. — Tony Fadell

I think hand-drawn animation can be something really special. If the character design is quite simple it has the ability to allow people to easily relate to the characters in a special manner. — Tomm Moore

I do think that in the near future, if it hasn't happened already, people will be able to use technology to design their own novels, perhaps with individuals themselves as the main character. In other words, everything is being individualized and narrowed. — Don DeLillo

It's a Japanese way of thinking, that I give value for my merchandise. So I don't want to sell unnecessarily expensive dresses and make just 10 or 20 and then feel satisfied. I want to design for real women who can afford my dresses. — Tadashi Shoji

We usually start by asking the collaborators to submit a couple of ideas. Then, Larry and I will sort through all the submissions and choose the ones based on what we think will add most to the collection. Once the scripts are written, the stages are: rehearse, record, edit, sound design, foley and finally, the mix. — Glenn McQuaid

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament and I get excited talking about making record artwork or working with T-shirt designs. The least exciting part for us is talking about the finances; it's like going to the dentist for us. But we at least try to do it in a creative way and put our stamp on it. I can only think that we create something that's worth the value of that dollar. — Eddie Vedder

When we think of design, we usually imagine things that are chosen because they are designed. Vases or comic books or architecture ... It turns out, though, that most of what we make or design is actually aimed at a public that is there for something else. The design is important, but the design is not the point. Call it "public design" ... Public design is for individuals who have to fill out our tax form, interact with our website or check into our hotel room despite the way it's designed, not because of it. — Seth Godin

I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it's hard for me to design one that's much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There's just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is. — Tim Schafer

Writing, for me, is a little like wood carving. You find the lump of tree (the big central theme that gets you started), and you start cutting the shape that you think you want it to be. But you find, if you do it right, that the wood has a grain of its own (characters develop and present new insights, concentrated thinking about the story opens new avenues). If you're sensible, you work with the grain and, if you come across a knot hole, you incorporate that into the design. This is not the same as 'making it up as you go along'; it's a very careful process of control. — Terry Pratchett

A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A new institution with new design, structure, body, soul, new thinking, and direction will replace the Planning Commission. It will be one that caters to the aspirations of 21st century India. — Narendra Modi

What is said determines who listens and who understands. Graphic design is a language, but graphic designers are so busy worrying about the nuances - accents, punctuation and so on - that they spend little time thinking about what the words add up to. I'm interested in using our communication skills to change the way things are. — Tibor Kalman

Think more design less — Ellen Lupton

All we have to do is replace Obama ... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. — Grover Norquist

I think one of the most important investments an organization like TNC [The Nature Conservancy] can make is in helping build local capacity - supporting the growth of a global network of small community-based entities. Help people who live within critical ecosystems help themselves and their neighbors to design a better future relationship between themselves and their natural resources. — Edward Norton

If you think you're meeting your destiny on the other side of a door you may not be interested in its design. — Ettore Sottsass

Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous. — Ralph Caplan

Designing is not a profession but an attitude. Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is the intergration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. Thinking in relationships. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand. — Tom Wujec

I think sometimes I might scare the editors, because they might feel they're getting old and they're not understanding it. The problem lies on their side of the fence, not mine. I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. — Alexander McQueen

If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture. — Brian Foote

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad. — Susan Orlean

I sometimes shock the people around me with how I see things. I come up with very unique solutions to things. As I can picture things in my mind and move them around to design and understand them. — Tina J. Richardson

Design is both a political and cultural force for change, although most designers choose not to think about the power it has. — Jonathan Barnbrook

There are three things you need to do as a CEO-founder," Rabois says: "Think strategically, drive design, and drive technology. Some people who are really good at one can build a pretty foundational company. Most people who are very successful are good at two. But Jack is the only person in the Valley I've met who's all three. He's a first-rate strategist, a first-rate designer, and a first-rate technologist. — Keith Rabois

We get to design what we want to see in the world rather than doing what other people think should be done. — Jack Dorsey

There's the famous quote that if you want to understand how animals live, you don't go to the zoo, you go to the jungle. The Future Lab has really pioneered that within Lego, and it hasn't been a theoretical exercise. It's been a real design-thinking approach to innovation, which we've learned an awful lot from. — Jorgen Vig Knudstorp

Design is a form of competitive advantage. People tend to think of design as good art, good visual language, which it absolutely has to be. But it's also about the ability to do systems thinking. — James P Hackett

I'm operating in the gap between the trajectory of modernity and the trajectory of modernism. So what people think is design is not design, it's my attempt to engage with the trajectory of modernity. — Liam Gillick

It's one of the curses of designing that when you look at anything, you're constantly thinking, Why? Why - why was it designed like that, and not like this? — Jonathan Ive

For much of its existence, design was all about convenience. We wanted to hide technology so that users are not distracted into thinking about the tools they use. — Evgeny Morozov

Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages. — Eric S. Raymond

When Mr. Lippmann says that the founders of our free institutions were adherents of the philosophy of natural law, and that 'the free political institutions of the Western world were conceived and established' by men who held certain abstract beliefs, he speaks with the shortened perspective of an American way of thinking in which a manner of conducting affairs is inconceivable without an architect and without a premeditated 'dedication to a proposition.' But the fact is that nobody ever 'founded these institutions.' They are the product of innumerable human choices, over long stretches of time, but not of any human design. — Michael Oakeshott

The design of the gum is expressed in the flow of it trunk and limbs, and the design of the European tree mainly in its foliage. In Europe great masses of foliage first attract the eye, here the limbs and trunk, which, on account of their proportion and colour, make themselves felt first, and one thinks of the foliage as a secondary matter. — Hans Heysen

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough. — Edward De Bono

To design is to plan and to organize, to order, to relate and to control. In short it embraces all means of opposing disorder and accident. Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies man's thinking and doing. — Josef Albers

I'm constantly thinking about design, shapes, patterns and colors, so I just want to be more of a blank canvas. But there is a comfort in knowing what you're going to wear, and that probably comes from Catholic school, where I wore a uniform for 10 years. — Prabal Gurung

I consider lace to be one of the prettiest imitations ever made of the fantasy of nature; lace always evokes for me those incomparable designs which the branches and leaves of trees embroider across the sky, and I do not think that any invention of the human spirit could have a more graceful or precise origin. — Coco Chanel

For years, I went around the world looking and then painting, but now I have to think first and then paint. It's driven me to find the design concept first, and to rely on my memory and technical skills to supply only those details that are needed. — Milford Zornes

Each season I strive to design a forward-thinking and effortless collection with a very clean minimalist aesthetic. — Francisco Costa

We have to accept that much of reality is ineffable and so to understand it we can't rely on words alone. — Oli Anderson

The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together. — Mary Robinson

We [MIT Smart Cities research group] try to identify the fundamental underlying design assumptions that everybody takes as a sort of given and unchallengeable when you think about solving these problems. And we try to challenge those assumptions. — William J. Mitchell

Few people think about this or are aware of it. But there is nothing made by human beings that does not involve a design decision somewhere. — Bill Moggridge

We live in a society that penalizes highly creative individuals for their non-conformist autonomy. This makes the teaching of problem solving in design both discouraging and difficult. A ... student (has) massive blocks against new ways of thinking, engendered by some 16 years of mis-education ... — Victor Papanek

If you look at any designer you admire, whose work inspires you, and whose approach somehow resonates with you, I promise you'll find a person who does not think of what they do as just their job — Alexander Isley

Solemn Australians think that an interest in design is a superficial and trivial interest. This is actually an improvement, they used to think it effeminate and vaguely immoral. — Robin Boyd

A painting walks into the room supported by the collector. It is the painting of a nude by a contemporary artist. She is scarred by shadows from venetian blinds. "The ritual scarification of light and shadow," I say. But am thinking, silently, the female nude is the self-ironization of the male. She, in his shadow, by design. — Carla Harryman