Usability Quotes

• Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

  Joel Spolsky

  Beer, Ugly, Coyotes

  19 Copy quote

• In the consumer economy taste is not the criterion in the marketing of expensive soft drinks, usability is not the primary criterion in the marketing of home and office appliances. We are surrounded with objects of desire, not objects of use.

  Donald A. Norman

  Home, Office, Marketing

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 7, p. 216, 1988.

  17 Copy quote

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• The usability tests we have conducted during the last year have shown an increasing reluctance among users to accept innovations in Web design. The prevailing attitude is to request designs that are similar to everything else people see on the Web.

  Jakob Nielsen

  Attitude, Years, People

  16 Copy quote

• Beauty and brains, pleasure and usability - they should go hand in hand.

  Donald A. Norman

  Hands, Design, Brain

  22 Copy quote

• Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.

  James Dyson

  Designer, Inaccessible, Products

  "Sir James Dyson: My 'Apple Moment'" by James Dyson, www.wired.com. October 6, 2011.

  14 Copy quote

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• The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

  Hans Hofmann

  Inspirational, Business, Mean

  1967 Search for the Real.

  96 Copy quote

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• Usability rules the web. Simply stated, if the customer can't find a product, then he or she will not buy it.

  Jakob Nielsen

  Customers, Products, Ifs

  Jakob Nielsen (2000). “Designing Web Usability”, New Riders Pub

  79 Copy quote

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• Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspiring, Business, Work

  Steve Jobs (0101). “Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs”, p.37, Prabhat Prakashan

  63 Copy quote

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• 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

  Design, Principles, Elements

  Jakob Nielsen (2000). “Designing Web Usability”, New Riders Pub

  53 Copy quote

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• You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Design, Hammers, Use

  228 Copy quote

• ...pay attention to what users do, not what they say.

  Jakob Nielsen

  Attention, Pay, User Experience

  26 Copy quote

• A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.

  Ben Shneiderman

  Technology, Design, Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

  52 Copy quote

• As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.

  Jef Raskin

  Educational, Design, Experience

  Jef Raskin (2000). “The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems”, p.5, Addison-Wesley Professional

  46 Copy quote

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• You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Inspiring, Peace, Ubuntu

  14 Copy quote

• Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Spiritual, Design, Misunderstood

  343 Copy quote

• To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.

  Milton Glaser

  Mean, Design, Masters

  44 Copy quote

• The web is the ultimate customer-empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouseclick away.

  Jakob Nielsen

  Empowering, World, Environment

  Jakob Nielsen (2000). “Designing Web Usability”, New Riders Pub

  22 Copy quote

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• Inadequate use of usability engineering methods in software development projects have been estimated to cost the US economy about $30 billion per year in lost productivity.

  Jakob Nielsen

  Engineering, Years, Cost

  18 Copy quote

• The argument is not between adding features and simplicity, between adding capability and usability. The real issue is about design: designing things that have the power required for the job while maintaining understandabili ty, the feeling of control, and the pleasure of accomplishment.

  Donald A. Norman

  Jobs, Real, Issues

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Successful, Design, Computer

  99 Copy quote

• If you don't have people that care about usability on your project, your project is doomed.

  Jeff Atwood

  People, Care, Projects

  6 Copy quote

• Findability precedes usability. In the alphabet and on the Web. You can’t use what you can’t find.

  Peter Morville

  Use, Alphabet

  48 Copy quote

• Usability is like love. You have to care, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to change. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s where growth and forgiveness come in.

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  Mistake, Love You, Like Love

  9 Copy quote

• Behavioral design is all about feeling in control. Includes: usability, understanding, but also the feel.

  Donald A. Norman

  Design, Understanding, Feelings

  7 Copy quote

• Usability methods are like sandpapering a chair. If you are making a chair, the sandpaper can make it smoother. But no amount of sandpaper will turn a chair into a table.

  Alan Cooper

  Tables, Chairs, Sandpaper

  13 Copy quote