Hilary Mason Quotes

If you watched companies such as Sony and Samsung grow, they focused first on features and then on industrial design, which made their products look and feel better.

I love taking an idea... to a prototype and then to a product that millions of people use.

I just want to build great products.

I like writing code. I like building product. I like making things that people like.

I'm looking for best practices constantly. Apple has beautiful design, beautiful product, incredibly functional. But mostly it's about picking product, getting behind it, marketing it and introducing it to a customer. What they've done just inspires me.

If you want to create a great product, just focus on one person. Make that one person have the most amazing experience ever.

Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product; it's an understanding of human nature.

You can't start a product simply by building it. You have to know why you're building it, and you might go down the wrong rabbit hole, waste time, and confuse things. Spending long afternoons with a sketchbook or talking through your ideas with other people can save a year in software development later on.

Who decides what's in Windows? The customers who buy it.

My focus is incredibly narrow. I can't talk with any authority other than design and development of product.

Apple has beautiful design, beautiful product, incredibly functional. But mostly, it's about picking product, getting behind it, marketing it, and introducing it to a customer. What they've done just inspires me.

Growth hackers are typically computer engineers that build great marketing ideas into the product during the development process.

Product development is emotional for me! It's really important as a brand that we feel that our products are going to be life-changing for everyone who buys them. We won't ever launch something we don't feel strongly about.

My dream is to build a tech company that helps people discover content.

I like to see people enjoy using my product. This is the mission of an engineer.

This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.

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

I don't think people buy technology products because of the personalities of the people behind them.

It's incredibly exciting to know people are using and living with the things I create.

My sweet spot is figuring out how to make a product that people love and how to refine it to make them love it more. All the rest is business noise.

It's not enough to have a hacker culture anymore. You have to have a design culture, too.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn't time for endless refinements.

I had to learn everything about manufacturing, patents and how to run a business, and eventually I came up with an prototype that worked.

Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.