Jef Raskin Quotes

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

User-centered design means understanding what your users need, how they think, and how they behave - and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your process.

In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.

Consumers have zero time for products that are not simple, intuitive, and attractive to use. This is especially true with Internet products, where clean and useful design is a prerequisite to keeping anyone on your site for more than 30 seconds.

I am confident that we can do better than GUIs because the basic problem with them (and with the Linux and Unix interfaces) is that they ask a human being to do things that we know experimentally humans cannot do well. The question I asked myself is, given everything we know about how the human mind works, could we design a computer and computer software so that we can work with the least confusion and greatest efficiency?

The problem is not software 'friendliness'. It is conceptual clarity. A globe does not say, 'good morning'. It is simple and clear, not 'friendly'.

Taken as a whole, consumer technologies have made startling advances, but they still are not as easy to use as they should be.

I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design.

Products have to be designed in a way that they are comprehensible.

My mantra is: 'Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas.'

Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it's designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out.

I think it's really important to design things with a kind of personality.

There's a fundamental problem with how the software business does things. We're asking people who are masters of hard-edged technology to design the soft, human side of software as well. As a result, they make products that are really cool - if you happen to be a software engineer.

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

Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.

Design is directed toward human beings. To design is to solve human problems by identifying them and executing the best solution.

Good design to me is both appearance and functionality together. It's the experience that makes it good design.

People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don't really need to understand humans so well.

I imported the first Mac into England in 1984; you know, the beige box. I imported what I think were the first four that came into England. I never opened the instruction manual. That was the best thing about it.

If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person.

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

Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.

Accessible design is good design.

Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.

Things that are ultimately complex must have a simple end user experience if they are to be successful.