Quotes

Design

I's not rocket science. It's social science – the science of understanding people's needs and their unique relationship with art, literature, history, music, work, philosohpy, community, technology and psychology. The act of design is structuring and creating that balance.

– Clement Mok

Don't get so far ahead of the parada that no-one knows you're in it.

– Josh Naisbitt

No prototype - no meeting.

– Tim Brown

Function reforms form, perpetually

– Steward Brand

Make things in order to think instead of think in order to make.

– Tim Brown

One prototype is worth thousand meetings.

Doing is the hard part

Intellect is best at pointing out what doesn’t work, and as such can be a force of destruction.

Such an overinflated assumption of ones ability can only come from a comfortable lack of experience.

Innovate as last resort

All models are wrong but some are useful – George Box

– Charles Eames

Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

If we care about what we’re making, we will make beautiful things.

Your solution can only be as good as your understanding of the problem.

People often describe problems they have in the form of solutions they want.

We design for ourselves, we design for our peers, we design for people we understand.

The details are not the details; they make the product.

– Charles Eames

Holy trinity is vision, plan and execution. Designers should care about all three, but it is easier to blame others when reality does not meet expectations.

– @CarolineDRX

Don't make museum quality systems that are treated as untouchable artifacts.

– Ricardo Vazquez

It's much easier to bullshit at the macro-level than it is to bullshit at the micro-level.

– @nntaleb

If you can't help, try being less in the way of others.

– An italian cook

Analytics

One ant is no ant

If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine."

– Jim Barksdale

Valuing business needs over user need (not realizing they are the same thing)

– Simeon Pouin (@simeon_P)

Best way to complain is to make things

Business

Charging by the hour punishes us for being good.

Learning

When you learn one thing well, you can learn other things fast

Almost everything is noise.

– Gerck Mckeown

Save money in the short term

I hate 'Service design' as a term - it's BS for selling snake oil. There is a important idea in it as a thinking tool and methodology.

– A design lead

Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself.

– Donald A. Norman

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

– Eliel Saarinen

Knowledge

Special knowledge can be a terrible disadvantage if it leads you too far along a path you cannot explain anymore.

– Brian Herbert (Dune: House Harkonnen)

Don't panic yet, there is plenty of time to panic

– Robert Sapolsky

Here is a guy living pathologically in his bucket

– Robert Sapolsky

“The most valuable asset in the software industry is the synthesis of programming skill and deep context in the business problem domain, in one skull.”

– Jesse Watson

I have great admiration for designers for many reasons, but when called upon to defend how they create value for the corporation, they could have said, "Without us, you don't have access to culture." But they haven't

– Grant McCracken

If it is worth telling another developer, it is worth telling the interpreter.