“When good designers talk about innovation, they mean ‘the successful exploitation of new ideas.’ They don’t stop with the invention. They turn their inspirations into reality.” – Simon Rucker

Read more about characteristics of good designers in Simon’s Harvard Business Review article “How Good Designers Think.”

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“Challenging users in the correct manner will ultimately lead to more engaged, informed, and self-sufficient users. Informed users have a better idea of what they want and can better articulate why they want it. Most importantly, a user who is engaged with a subject is more willing and able to grow with it.” – P.J. Onori

Read more in P.J.’s article “In Defense of Hard” from the Adaptive Path newsletter.

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“The purpose of user experience design is to create personal value. We’re not here to reduce risk. We’re not here to massage conversion rates. We’re here to make things that improve people’s lives. In doing so, our companies profit in both senses of the word. It’s insufficient to judge our industry by the ROI we generate, or our contribution toward GDP. We should judge our industry by the happiness we create.” – Cennydd Bowles

Read more in the transcript of Cennydd’s IA Summit 2011 closing plenary speech “The fall and rise of user experience.“

1. It takes great empathy to create a good experience
2. The success of an experience is measured by the amount of happiness it brings
3. What personal qualities make a good interaction designer?

“I’ve noticed that some attributes are common among the people whose work I admire. The people who are the most effective seem to continue to study their practice, and perfect their craft. After long hours of use, they find the way to flow within any app at their disposal, and become as fast and effective as they can using it. The key is what they do with the app once they’ve become expert at their craft, expert in finding the right design, expert in communicating, and expert in refining… Don’t let anyone tell you that what [tool] you choose is wrong or inappropriate. Find the right design and keep winning.” – Michael Angeles

This quote is from Michael’s article “Have a nice day.” Click on the thumbnail image above to view the full sized quote card.

1. Users are “rotten with imperfection.” Embrace the rotten-ness.
2. How I Discovered User Experience Design and Why I’m Still Here

“Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions. Bad websites have horrible personalities and instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly. We need to design things–products, websites, services–to convey whatever personality and emotions are desired.” – Don Norman

Read more in Don’s interview with Johnny Holland: “Design Research and Innovation.”

1. Design products that appeal to both cognition and emotion for a competitive advantage
2. Prototyping has given us the power to show and tell the story of our design solutions
3. Design is really about the way products and services come to life

“Customer experience needs to be a competence, not a function. The end game is to have a customer-centric culture and a set of customer-centric processes, at which point customer-centricity becomes self-sustaining.” – Harley Manning

Read more in Harley’s interview “Making User and Customer Experience a Business Competency.”

1. Collaborating to provide insights can lead to positive customer experiences
2. Customer focus is the beginning, middle and end of a successful web strategy
3. Investing in the customer experience turns customers into advocates

“Fostering a culture based on creativity and collaboration helps bring down the walls that divide people from each other within organizations. Collaboration is not just amongst and within a given team; it needs to filter through and cross teams and departments. Creativity is not relegated to the creative department; it is a requirement for all.” – Cynthia Thomas

Read more in Cynthia’s article “The Importance of Designing an Experience Culture.“

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“Creating truly great products requires an entire product team to place the needs of users foremost when making product decisions—or even better, a user-centered corporate culture… Creating great product user experiences takes a village—a smoothly functioning multidisciplinary product team that shares ownership of UX.” - Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Read more in Pabini’s article “Sharing Ownership of UX.”

1. Teamwork and collaboration make great user experiences possible
2. A coherent product user interface is the product to users
3. Creating a successful product requires designing the Total User Experience

“Failure and loss can be good. If you aren’t finding failure in your design work, then you aren’t really exploring all the possible solutions… Failure is not an end result if we have purpose and intention. It’s only a marker along the road to designing great experiences.” – Francisco Inchauste

Read more in Francisco’s article “Failure by Design.”

1. To be great designers, we need to improve our mental game
2. Great experiences have an innate ability to change the way we view the world
3. Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information

“Web sites are functionally confusing because they’re not delicate enough, because they were not designed with enough care. While web sites need to become simpler, simplicity is not a matter of dumbing things down. In contrary. Simplicity is when someone takes care of the details.” – Oliver Reichenstein

This quote is from iA’s article “What’s Next in Web Design?”

1. There is a delicate balance between the simplicity of use and the complexity of usefulness
2. Simplicity vs. Clarity
3. Simplicity is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations