Interaction Design Quotes

Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design. ~ Jesse James Garrett

I think it's more accurate to think of aesthetics as a key ingredient in a recipe, as opposed to the icing on the cake. ~ Stephen P. Anderson

Stafford's Hypothesis on The Transference of Existence:
Even if you self-isolated, stood still, and held your breath after traveling into the past, you would still be a pebble diverting the flow of time in some way. The very transference of existence via wormholes, not interaction with past actors or events, creates paradoxes.

Time Transference has three stages:

1. The distance traversed between the origin or starting point of the wormhole and the rip in the Chronosphere (space-time continuum).
2. The transference of biological material through the rip in the Chronosphere without damage to or mutation of the genetic code of the chrono-commuter.
3. Arrival at the endpoint of the time transference - the reconstruction of the chrono-commuter's genetic material and the sealing of the rip in the Chronosphere. ~ Stewart Stafford

The Earth is indeed a precious gift of the Creator who, in designing its intrinsic order, has given us bearings that guide us as stewards of his creation. Precisely from within this framework, the Church considers matters concerning the environment and its protection intimately linked to the theme of integral human development. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

That thing we call a place is the intersection of many changing forces passing through, whirling around, mixing, dissolving, and exploding in a fixed location. To write about a place is to acknowledge that phenomena often treated separately - ecology, democracy, culture, storytelling, urban design, individual life histories and collective endeavors - coexist. They coexist geographically, spatially, in place, and to understand a place is to engage with braided narratives and sue generous explorations. ~ Rebecca Solnit

News is almost more interesting to me than other people's fiction, if that makes sense. But other people's fiction in terms of design is still incredibly interesting to me. ~ Neill Blomkamp

My captain once said that you meet people in your life who you believe will be your companions on the road, only to discover that they fall by the wayside. Others who you meet without design climb mountains with you, ~ Sally Gardner

For me, typography is a triangular relationship between design idea, typographic elements, and printing technique. ~ Wolfgang Weingart

I should perhaps like others have astonished you with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you. ~ Jonathan Swift

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education. ~ Paul Lockhart

Effective problem solving in design requires a balance of strategy and spontaneity, intelligence and creativity. ~ Maggie Macnab

There are a thousand 'greatest' melodies, just as there are a thousand 'greatest' poems and a thousand 'greatest' pictures, because there are a thousand moods in the mind of man when a certain note rings with the most clarity--when a certain design is most sharply silhouetted against the changing curtain of his mind. ~ Beverley Nichols

US government button specifications run to twenty-two pages. This fact on its own yields a sense of what it is like to design garments for the Army. ~ Mary Roach

The two or three antique chairs had apparently been chosen for their bizarre design and not for their ability to seat anyone, for they were delicate suggestions, hints at furniture with cushions barely capable of accommodating a child. A human in such a room was expected not to rest or sit or even relax, but rather pose, thereby transforming himself into a human furnishing that would complement the decor as well as possible. ~ Anonymous

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005] ~ Steven Pinker

We have neither the strength nor the opportunity to accomplish all the good and all the evil which we design. ~ Luc De Clapiers

Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great. Competent design is not too much of a stretch. But if you are trying to do something new, you have challenges on so many axes. ~ Jonathan Ive

People who build their own home tend to be very courageous. These people are curious about life. They're thinking about what it means to live in a house, rather than just buying a commodity and making it work. ~ Tom Kundig

Let me try to explain to you, what to my taste is characteristic for all intelligent thinking. It is, that one is willing to study in depth an aspect of one's subject matter in isolation for the sake of its own consistency, all the time knowing that one is occupying oneself only with one of the aspects. We know that a program must be correct and we can study it from that viewpoint only; we also know that it should be efficient and we can study its efficiency on another day, so to speak. In another mood we may ask ourselves whether, and if so: why, the program is desirable. But nothing is gained - on the contrary! - by tackling these various aspects simultaneously. It is what I sometimes have called "the separation of concerns", which, even if not perfectly possible, is yet the only available technique for effective ordering of one's thoughts, that I know of. This is what I mean by "focusing one's attention upon some aspect": it does not mean ignoring the other aspects, it is just doing justice to the fact that from this aspect's point of view, the other is irrelevant. It is being one- and multiple-track minded simultaneously. ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus. ~ David Hockney

Your style guide is your most loyal brand protector. ~ Dane Brookes

Death is a kind of guilt in itself. We're all alive in this world together, and we're also all mortal, but when one person pulls his thread through to the other side, it can start a chain reaction you never in your wildest dreams saw coming. Maybe you'll be left with nothing more than an unholy knot to unpick. Maybe a new design. Sometimes a whole new perspective on yourself. ~ Tiffany Baker

If there's one thing you learn by working on a lot of different Web sites, it's that almost any design idea
no matter how appallingly bad
can be made usable in the right circumstances, with enough effort. ~ Steve Krug

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a particular point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to have that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.

On the other hand, a person who takes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as is required, to fake the context as well. This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the 'bullshit artist'. ~ Harry G. Frankfurt

Creativity is in everyone; it just manifests itself differently with each person. My CPA, for example, is one of the most creative people I know. ~ Ron Miriello

But the prospects of designing chemical plants for industrial scale chemical processes seemed far less interesting than the chemical events that occur in biological systems. ~ Paul Berg

Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort. It is merely amorphous. One might say, it is mere content, deprived of form." Childan nodded. "Yet," Paul said, "I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?" He motioned Childan over. "It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis. ~ Philip K. Dick

The tragedy of feminine design is that it receives so little official support. Most of the world's design schools, having been organized by men, encourage a masculine approach, even when they are run by women. Yet many designers who are male in the biological sense have a feminine approach to design. ~ Tom Turner

Being smart in the arts is the same as being smart in engineering is the same as being smart in writing is the same as being smart in anything, really. It's the ability to manipulate all the pieces of the puzzle in your mind, try to fit them together, and when they don't fit quite right ... you sand the edges/corners and make them all fit. ~ Gerald Jay Sussman

Everything and everyone represents at least one brand. Therefore, to brand or not to brand is not even a question. ~ Laura Busche

God designs people's emotions so you fall in love with people who, in return, wouldn't even use your hollowed-out skull for a spittoon. ~ Scott Adams

... like blood moving to a frozen extremity, my return to human interaction wasn't without discomfort. I felt unbearably awkward, relying heavily on him to show me what he liked, to tell me what to do to please him. I knew I wanted to go from being passive to actively pleasing him, to giving instead of just taking. I had a moment of real respect for the ease of being thrown against a wall and fucked hard. ~ Z.A. Maxfield

We never could design a building as beautiful as the trees. ~ Pietro Belluschi

You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems. In scarcity, people will tend to steal. If you make things available, people tend not to steal. ~ Jacque Fresco

The primary purposes of the political pamphlets of the early 1700s were neither to enlighten nor educate the masses, but to incite partisan conversation and spread commensurate ideas ... Facts were not permitted to fetter the views they espoused, and the restraints of objective journalistic credibility were discarded by pamphleteers bent on promoting subjective slant to an insatiable general public for whom political dissonance was an integral part of social interaction. ~ Gavin John Adams

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn. ~ Charles Bukowski

You should not be too much of a purist in your way of life, for you need to be able to accept all that is foul. You should not be too clear in making distinctions in social interactions, for you need to accept everyone whether they are good or bad, wise or foolish. ~ Zicheng Hong

Fifth, I think that you [Daniel Dennett] and Richard are absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design - we are losing this battle, not the least of which is the two new supreme court justices who are certainly going to vote to let it into classrooms - what we need is not knee-jerk atheism but serious grappling with the issues - neither of you are willing to study Christianity seriously and to engage with the ideas - it is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil, as Richard claims - more than this, we are in a fight, and we need to make allies in the fight, not simply alienate everyone of good will."

"William Dembski. "Remarkable exchange between Michael Ruse and Daniel Dennett" "
2006 ~ Michael Ruse

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

Jesus has prepared the way and has made following our destiny possible, whereas we are helpless by ourselves. We can find and fulfill our purpose by responding to the clear, simple call of Jesus Christ: "Follow Me." He is the doorway to fulfilling our destiny, where our divine design and God-ordained purpose live in perfect harmony. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Without rules you can't have anything, but you don't want to just be pedantic or obsessive. The painting is finished when it's working. The overall balance is right. Balance shouldn't be confused with design. There has to be restless jostle and aggression and a bit of dynamism, not just pat-ness or settled-ness or immediate pleasing-ness. ~ Matthew Collings

Design is an unknown. ~ Geoffrey Beene

Because elites are informal does not mean they are invisible. At any small group meeting anyone with a sharp eye and an acute ear can tell who is influencing whom. The member of a friendship group will relate more to each other than to other people. They listen more attentively and interrupt less. They repeat each other's points and give in amiably. The 'outs' they tend to ignore or grapple with. The 'outs' approval is not necessary for making a decision; however it is necessary for the 'outs' to stay on good terms with the 'ins'. Of course, the lines are not as sharp as I have drawn them. They are nuances of interaction,not prewritten scripts. But they are discernible, and they do have their effect. Once one knows with whom it is important to check before a decision is made, and whose approval is the stamp of acceptance, one knows who is running things. ~ Jo Freeman

Service Marketing delivers when great communication meets great service design. ~ Peter Bowman

The artist in me cries out for design. ~ Robert Frost

Security-by-design is an indispensable prerequisite to the establishment of vital critical infrastructure resiliency. Each device vulnerable to adversarial compromise, inflates and bolsters the exploitable cyber-attack surface that can be leveraged against targets, and every enslaved device grants adversaries carte blanche access that can be utilized to parasitically entwine malware into organizational networks and IoT microcosms, and that can be leveraged to amplify the impact and harm inflicted on targeted end-users, organizations, and government entities ~ James Scott, Sr. Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

if this store of cosmic prana were inanimate, without a will and a direction of its own, we could very well flatter ourselves that every thought and fancy that we have is the product of our own volition. but since we are ourselves the products of this superintelligent cosmic power, it would be illogical to the last degree to presume that our individual ideas and fancies are exclusively our own creations and have no relationship to the ocean of which we are but a tiny drop. when it is once admitted that mind and consciousness are cosmic entities, it would then be ridiculous to suppose that the thoughts and ideas in an individual atom of this cosmic consciousness can have an entirely independent existence and not reflect the will and design of the cosmic whole. ~ Gopi Krishna

It wasn't an architect or a designer who invented objects, but an artisan. ~ Giorgetto Giugiaro

The violence that undergirded the country, so flagrantly on display during Black History Month, and the intimate violence of "Yeah, nigger, what's up now?" were not unrelated. And this violence was not magical, but was of a piece and by design. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I would love to design my own shoe line. Women suffer too much in heels. I want to design a line of sexy platform heels that don't hurt. ~ Wynter Gordon