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What makes something simple or complex? It's not the number of dials or controls or how many features it has: It is whether the person using the device has a good conceptual model of how it operates.

Donald A. Norman

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Donald A. Norman
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More quotes by Donald A. Norman

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If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual.
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User experience is really the whole totality. Opening the package good example. It's the total experience that matters. And that starts from when you first hear about a product experience is more based upon memory than reality. If your memory of the product is wonderful, you will excuse all sorts of incidental things.
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I think there is a tendency in science to measure what is measurable and to decide that what you cannot measure must be uninteresting.
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The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.
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Beauty and brains, pleasure and usability - they should go hand in hand.
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Simplification is as much in the mind as it is in the device.
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In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.
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It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people's lives.
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Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.
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The major problems facing the development of products that are safer, less prone to error, and easier to use and understand are not technological: they are social and organizational.
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It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.
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Forget the complaints against complexity instead, complain about confusion.
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No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service - from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly. That's systems thinking.
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Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right.
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The current paradigm is so thoroughly established that the only way to change is to start over again.
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If you're more susceptible to interruption, you do more out of the box thinking.
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We are victims of our own success. We have let technology lead the way, pushing ever faster to newer, faster, and more powerful systems, with nary a moment to rest, contemplate, and to reflect upon why, how, and for whom all this energy has been expended.
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Readers always seem to think that the author has some control over the design of their books.
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Am I an Apple bigot? No. I can critique their products and their customer service philosophy. But overall, they do better than any other player.
Donald A. Norman
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Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [...] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is.
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