Interface Design Quotes & Sayings

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

I am only a footnote, but proud of the footnote I have become. My subsequent work on eliciting principles and developing the theory of interface design, so that many people will be able to do what I did is probably also footnote-worthy. In looking back at this turn-of-the-century period, the rise of a worldwide network will be seen as the most significant part of the computer revolution. — Jef Raskin

Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems. A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail. — Jakob Nielsen

Why can't you summon a command line and search your real-world home for 'Honda car keys,' and specify rooms in your house to search instead of folders or paths in your computer's home directory? It's a crippling design flaw in the real-world interface. — Richard Dooling

Once the product's task is known, design the interface first; then implement to the interface design. — Jef Raskin

To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior. — Jakob Nielsen

The principles of good human-to-computer interface design are simplicity, support, clarity, encouragement, satisfaction, accessibility, versatility, and personalization. While it's essential to heed these, it's also important to empathize with and inspire your audience so they feel you're treating them less like a faceless user and more like a human being. — Sharon Lee

The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned. — Bruce Tognazzini

The new Zune may not be an iPod killer, but it does offer a clean interface, great industrial design, HD radio, and a subscription model for music, making it significantly less expensive for big users. — Douglas Rushkoff

[The] dynamics of computational artifacts extend beyond the interface narrowly defined, to relations of people with each other and to the place of computing in their ongoing activities. System design, it follows, must include not only the design of innovative technologies, but their artful integration with the rest of the social and material world. — Lucy Suchman

On small, informal projects, a lot of design is done while the programmer sits at the keyboard. "Design" might be just writing a class interface in pseudocode before writing the details. It might be drawing diagrams of a few class relationships before coding them. It might be asking another programmer which design pattern seems like a better choice. Regardless of how it's done, small projects benefit from careful design just as larger projects do, and recognizing design as an explicit activity maximizes the benefit you will receive from it. — Steve McConnell

A well-designed and humane interface does not need to be split into beginner and expert subsystems. — Jef Raskin

The best way to learn the value of good interface design is to use lots of interfaces - some good, some bad. Experience will teach you what works and what doesn't. Never assume that a painful interface is "just the way it is." Fix it, or wrap it in — Marijn Haverbeke

No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it. — Alan Cooper

Design a clear and simple interface. The primary task of the interface is to present the player with a choice of the available actions at each moment and to provide instant feedback when the player makes a choice. — Jordan Mechner

Intuitive design happens when current knowledge is the same as the target knowledge. — Jared Spool

How is the body, including the observing body, becoming a component of new machines, economies, apparatuses, whether social, libidinal, or technological? In what way is subjectivity becoming a precarious condition of interface between rationalized systems of exchange and networks of information? — Jonathan Crary

Watch for coupling that's too tight. "Coupling" refers to how tight the connection is between two classes. In general, the looser the connection, the better. Several general guidelines flow from this concept: Minimize accessibility of classes and members. Avoid friend classes, because they're tightly coupled. Make data private rather than protected in a base class to make derived classes less tightly coupled to the base class. Avoid exposing member data in a class's public interface. Be wary of semantic violations of encapsulation. Observe the "Law of Demeter" (discussed in Design and Implementation Issues of this chapter). Coupling goes hand in glove with abstraction and encapsulation. Tight coupling occurs when an abstraction is leaky, or when encapsulation is broken. — Steve McConnell

The real tight interface is between the book and the reader-the world of the book is plugged right into your brain, never mind the [virtual reality] bodysuit. — Bill McKibben

The fusion of art and technology that we call interface design. — Steven Johnson

For thirty years most interface design, and most comptuer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest idea is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest idea is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. — Mark Weiser

My skills weren't that I knew how to design a floppy disk, I knew how to design a printer interface, I knew how to design a modem interface; it was that, when the time came and I had to get one done, I would design my own, fresh, without knowing how other people do it. That was another thing that made me very good. All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life. — Jessica Livingston

Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him- the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store-he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something - a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug- he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options.
He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism. — Walter Isaacson

To quiet the land. When there has been unspecific trauma on the land and residents feel the impact, it is possible to do a constellation to identify the trauma and ask blessing of the land To inform land use: reforestation, development of both the land and communities that interface with the land To inform architectural design: Identify locations for green spaces and test environmentally sound building materials To inform energy choices: passive solar, hydro, wind, alternative building practices To support real estate transactions- Why won't a place sell, supporting potential buyers to be able to look at properties in a systemic way To support environmentally based community action agencies Work with pets- both for veterinary practice and to — Francesca Boring

The key utility measure is user happiness. Speed of response and the size of the index are factors in user happiness. It seems reasonable to assume that relevance of results is the most important factor: blindingly fast, useless answers do not make a user happy. However, user perceptions do not always coincide with system designers' notions of quality. For example, user happiness commonly depends very strongly on user interface design issues, including the layout, clarity, and responsiveness of the user interface, which are independent of the quality of the results returned. — Christopher D. Manning

A general principle for all user interface design is to go through all of your design elements and remove them one at a time. — Jakob Nielsen

Readers usually ignore the typographic interface, gliding comfortably along literacy's habitual groove. Sometimes, however, the interface should be allowed to fail. By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identity of a page, screen, place, or product. — Ellen Lupton

IBM was the original contractor for much of the computer interface design on the film. — Douglas Trumbull

Women have their own strengths, like fashion. In technology, we can contribute in a big way in terms of the design of the user interface. — Weili Dai

That strange new zone between medium and message. That zone we call the interface. — Steven Johnson