Resources

25 Quotes to Inspire UX Designers

EM Eric Moran· 2021
  1. “Pay attention to what users do, not what they say.”

    – Jakob Nielsen, User Advocate and Principal of the Nielsen Norman Group

  2. “People ignore design that ignores people”

    – Frank Chimero, Co-founder of Abstract

  3. “You are not your users… the developers are not your users, and your coworkers are not your users.”

    – Tim Broadwater, Certified UX Developer

  4. “Want your users to fall in love with your designs? Fall in love with your users.”

    – Dana Chisnell, Policy Design Research at United States Digital Service

  5. “If the user can’t use it, it doesn’t work.”

    – Susan Dray, President of Dray & Associates, Inc.

  6. “You can’t understand good design if you do not understand people.”

    – Dieter Rams, Industrial Designer

  7. “Usability answers the question, ‘Can the user accomplish the goal.’”

    – Dr. Joyce Lee

  8. “UX doesn’t live inside our phones or our websites. We need to step way outside of those devices to understand what people are doing in the real world.”

    – Matt Hryhorsky, UX Strategist

  9. “If you don’t talk to your customers, how will you know how to talk to your customers?”

    – Will Evans, Director, Experience Design for Semantic Foundry

  10. “You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”

    – Albert Camus, French Philosopher

  11. “To be a great designer, you need to look a little deeper into how people think and act.”

    – Paul Boag, Customer Experience Consultant

  12. "When UX doesn’t consider ALL users, shouldn’t it be known as “SOME User Experience” or… SUX?”

    – Billy Gregory

CREATING GOOD DESIGN

  1. “It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.”

    – Jony Ive, Former Chief Design Officer of Apple Inc.

  2. “Don’t make something unless it’s both necessary and useful. But if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”

    – Josh Porter

  3. “Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because. Good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible.”

    – Donald Norman, American Researcher, Professor, and Author

  4. “Good design is like a refrigerator, when it works, no one notices, but when it doesn’t, it sure stinks.”

    – Irene Au, Design Partner at Khosla Ventures

  5. “There is no such thing as a boring project. There are only boring executions.”

    – Irene Etzkorn, Chief Clarity Officer of Siegelvision

  6. “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”

    – Jeffrey Zeldman, American Web Designer

  7. “This is our job as designers – to continue making decisions until the purpose of the design is perfectly clear. Then you are done.”

    – Terry Acker, Product design and development at Parabol

  8. “Design used to be the seasoning you’d sprinkle on for taste; now it’s the flour you need at the start of the recipe.”

    – John Maeda, Executive, Designer and Technologist

  9. “Every great design begins with an even better story”

    – Lorinda Mamo, Graphic Designer

  10. “A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain, it’s not that good.”

    – Martin LeBlanc, Caprion Proteomics CEO

SIMPLICITY

  1. “Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information.”

    – Edward Tufte, Professor of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University

  2. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

    – Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Artist

  3. “Design is so simple. That’s why it’s so complicated.”

    – Paul Rand, American Art Director and Graphic Designer

We hope this inspires you!

Put yourself in your clients shoes and design something meaningful for them.