Laurie Anderson Quotes

Unfortunately, the client that exists today is still pretty much the prototype design.

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

With the early prototypes, I held the phone to my ear and my ear [would] dial the number. You have to detect all sorts of ear-shapes and chin shapes, skin colour and hairdo... that was one of just many examples where we really thought, perhaps this isn’t going to work.

When you go to a site, you usually run into usability problems pretty quickly. They're not hidden. They're not complicated. They're not baffling. They were in the design or crept into the design.

When talking to first-time entrepreneurs, I often ask them: 'How do you know that people want your product or service?' As you can expect, the answer is often that they don't yet, but will know once they launch. And they're right. That's why it's critical to launch as quickly as possible so you can get that feedback.

I had to actually purchase a book to learn the API and write the client. It was pretty frustrating trying to learn the API and develop a product quickly.

We developed simple test tools to optimize imaging parameters. No company was interested in our idea.

No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.

The problem with Myspace was always that it was never as strong a product as it needed to be. It left itself vulnerable to competition. It was only a matter of time before someone created something better.

Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them.

The B-29 engines have more bugs than the insect collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Don't spend months building something without any idea if someone actually wants it.

If you are ready to put a product or service on the market, look at that product or service and see how you can test it inexpensively. Keep in mind, you'll only need one; you don't need 1,000 to get the answer.

When we were kicking around the idea for Netflix in 1997, proving out an idea was expensive and labor-intensive. There was no Squarespace, no cloud. If you wanted a website, you had to build it from scratch. If you wanted an online store, you had to completely design it yourself.

The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing.

I am tired of spending a little bit of money in a lot of pieces because they keep on falling apart.

Even here in California with more contemporary buildings. I have a real problem with the low doorframes. It's a curse! That's just another of the many problems I have to live with.

It's one of the curses of designing that when you look at anything, you're constantly thinking, Why? Why - why was it designed like that, and not like this?

He who makes the quickest, coolest prototypes reigns!

I'm talking about technical goofs. I'm pretty much on top of it. The kind of picture you're referring to would have to be more about the effects of technical things, technical phenomena, and I'm just not interested in that kind of work at all.

You can't put out projects that you don't use yourself.

I spend almost as much time figuring out what's wrong with my computer as I do actually using it.

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.