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User Experience Quotes

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User Experience Quotes

“The more you watch users carefully and listen to them articulate their intentions, motivations, and thought processes, the more you realize that their individual reactions to Web pages are based on so many variables that attempts to describe users in terms of one-dimensional likes and dislikes are futile and counter-productive. Good design, on the other hand, takes this complexity into account.”

“Neoliberalism has, to a great extent, succeeded in replacing in-depth, critical, and independent social science with research funded by corporations to serve corporate interests. We are seeing a sharp decline of independent writers and researchers and a sharp rise of UX (user experience) jobs that are often narrow in scope, and solely focused on understanding users not to create a more informed and critical society, but simply to increase numbers, get users to consume more, and to increase profits for the few at the top.”

“Once upon a time, in the glory days of the early internet, when UX wasn’t even an afterthought, websites were clunky, confusing and about as user-friendly as a cactus. Have any of you ever seen those fonts or animated gifs from the early inter- net? A sight to be seen.”

“Whether we’re communicating with a human or a machine, the goal is to create a shared understanding of the world. That’s the point behind both the rules governing polite conversation and how a user-friendly machine should work.”

“The simplest answer is that the user had access to reality—every company builds a bubble around itself, where the products get built and tested in a more controlled environment than they get used in. This is especially true of complex software. What the early users enabled Xiaomi to see was how MIUI actually worked when real (albeit unusually technically proficient) people tried to install it on a wide variety of devices.”

“A good designer should constantly be looking for opportunities to learn from others’ mistakes. Instead of blaming the protagonists, we should try to put ourselves in their shoes and honestly answer these questions: What would lead me to design the same interface they did? What decisions led to this product being approved and shipped? How can I avoid finding myself in a similar position in the future?”

“When designing for digital mediums, it’s easy to become detached from how design decisions affect the end user. The word “user” itself can be a vehicle for that detachment. When the “user” doesn’t have a face and a name, it becomes a formless concept, blending in with other quantitative metrics and taking on any assumed needs to justify business decisions. It quickly becomes a number on a crowded dashboard, and its reaction to the product is just another metric to consider in an effort to increase revenue.”

“If the forest were covered with ten times the number of blue markers I had seen on my hike, the probability of my getting lost would certainly be reduced. One could imagine the markers organized in a more symbolic shape—say a real arrow, instead of a cryptic linear marker. And if we wish to go that far, why not just paint the more explicit text, "This way," on the rocks in 100-point Helvetica so there's no ambiguity whatsoever? Yet at some point, with the successive addition of more sophisticated elements, the true value of the untainted forest suddenly vanishes.”

“Usability plays a much wider role in our lives than most people realize. It’s not just about using a website, a piece of software, or the latest technology. Usability is about setting up a tent, relighting a furnace to heat a home, trying to figure out a tax form, or driving an unfamiliar rental car. Usability impacts everyone, every day. It cuts across cultures, age, gender, and economic class.”