“In the same way that industrial designers have shaped our everyday life through objects that they design for our offices and for our homes, interaction design is shaping our life with interactive technologies – computers, telecommunications, mobile phones, and so on. If I were to sum up interaction design in a sentence, I would say that it’s about shaping our everyday life through digital artifacts – for work, for play, and for entertainment.” - Gillian Crampton Smith

Gillian wrote the foreward to Bill Moggridge’s book Designing Interactions. Watch a video interview with Gillian in which she discusses the ways in which people adopt technologies and the growing sophistication in the qualities of interaction design.

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“As web designers, we need to be very careful about the lure of complexity. We should not fall into the trap of thinking that if it’s hard to design, it must be good; that if it’s using the latest technology, it must be good; that if all our friends think it’s really cool, it must be good.” - Gerry McGovern

Read Gerry’s article “Achieving greater simplicity involves managing increasing complexity” for his thoughts on the importance of reducing complexity. Gerry McGovern provides website content management solutions.

“For a human being the product is not an end in itself but the gateway to a plethora of experiences.” - Nokia Design Manifesto

Browse through the first edition of Nokia’s Design Manifesto (pdf) for many inspiring thoughts about design.

“While each discipline on the product team has its role to play, it is the true teamwork and collaboration of a cohesive product team that makes great user experiences possible.” -Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Read Pabini’s article “Sharing Ownership of UX” on UXmatters for her thoughts on how the entire product team must work together when making product decisions.

“There are no simple ‘right’ answers for most web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need—carefully thought out, well executed, and tested.” - Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Be sure to pick up Steve’s book Don’t Make Me Think if you haven’t already.  It is a great overview of basic usability topics.

“Information architecture is not about surface glamor; it’s about mission-critical infrastructure.  And infrastructure has widespread and long-term impact. The ripples of our designs spread outwards, affecting the work of interface designers, programmers, authors, and eventually users… As we design the legacy information architectures of tomorrow, we should consider our responsibility to the big here and the long now.” - Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville

Purchase Information Architecutre for the World Wide Web for a great overview of Information Architecture.

“The world is complex, and so too must be the activities that we perform. But that doesn’t mean that we must live in continual frustration. No. The whole point of human-centered design is to tame complexity, to turn what would appear to be a complicated tool into one that fits the task, that is understandable, usable, enjoyable.” - Don Norman

Read Don’s article “Simplicity Is Not The Answer” for his thoughts on why simplicity should not necessarily be the primary goal when creating products and services.

“Experience design should not be solely brand focused; instead it should not be too branded focused. It is about designing delivery of customer needs, so naturally it should start with the customers. It should form the core of a go-to-market strategy of any brand. It is the experience first, then the messages.” - Idris Mootee

Read Idris’ article “Experience Design Is The Active Pursuit Of Customer-Inspired Products/Services, Not Just Company-Defined Products/Services” here.

“If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person.” - Alan Cooper

Purchase Alan Cooper’s book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity here.

“Design is the term we use to describe both the process and the result of giving tangible form to human ideas. Design doesn’t just contribute to the quality of life; design, in many ways, now constitutes the quality of life.” - Peter Lawrence

Peter is the Founder of the Corporate Design Foundation, a non-profit education and research organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life and the effectiveness of organizations through design.