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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

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Alan Cooper
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: June 3
Computer Scientist
Software Programmer
Writer
San Francisco County
California
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Tables
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Sandpaper
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Smoother
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Usability
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More quotes by Alan Cooper

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Keep it simple: In general, interfaces should use simple geometric forms, minimal contours, and a restricted color palette comprised primarily of less-saturated or neutral colors balanced with a few high contrast accent colors that emphasize important information. Typography should not vary widely in an interface.
Alan Cooper
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Well madam, have you looked in the mirror and seen the state of your nose? Boxing is my excuse. What's yours?
Alan Cooper
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I just like so many different kinds of music that I like experimenting. I don't want to keep making the same record over and over and over. I'm an 'evolve or die' kind of a musician. I think it's cool to try new things.
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If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.
Alan Cooper
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Men do not greet one another like this ... except perhaps at rugby club dinners.
Alan Cooper
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Define what the product will do before you design how the product will do it.
Alan Cooper
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Computers no longer interface with humans--they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival.
Alan Cooper
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One of the most heinous, insidious lies is the notion that you have to be an asshole to be a successful business person.
Alan Cooper
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Ironically, the thing that will likely make the least improvement in the ease of use of software-based products is new technology. There is little difference technically between a complicated, confusing program and a simple, fun, and powerful product.
Alan Cooper
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While making art you should just do what is in your heart.
Alan Cooper
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Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.
Alan Cooper
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Past dreams of bliss our lives contain, And slight the chords that still retain A heart estranged to joys again, To scenes by memory's silver chain Close-linked, and ever yet apart, That like the vine, whose tendrils young Around some fostering branch have clung, Grown with its growth, as tho' it sprung From one united heart.
Alan Cooper
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You Don't Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted!
Alan Cooper
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It's harder than you might think to squander millions of dollars, but a flawed software development process is a tool well suited to the job.
Alan Cooper
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We seem to be keeping old fans and are bringing on new fans that are teenagers. I think that is amazing. When I was a teenager, that was when I fell in love with music. It affected me in a deep way. That's why I love having teenagers at our shows.
Alan Cooper
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Just how do I design if not with prototyping? An excellent question. The short answer is 'on paper.'
Alan Cooper
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A powerful tool in the early stages of developing scenarios is to pretend the interface is magic. If your persona has goals and the product has magical powers to meet them, how simple could the interaction be? This kind of thinking is useful to help designers look outside the box.
Alan Cooper
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I just try and learn to be a good husband and be a good father before I am a good rock star. That means saying no to certain things that go with the business.
Alan Cooper
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You can get spiritual things out of books and stories and they have nothing to do with religion.
Alan Cooper
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Form follows function straight to hell.
Alan Cooper