In a recent interview, Eric Ries said that design is the new basis of competition. I couldn’t agree more. Design is more than just how that something looks, more than how something functions. Design has evolved to even consider how you feel when you use, or are about to use something.
Here are 50 people from that agree with the Lean Startup author. Spread the word that “design matters” by sharing any of these tweetable quotes.
1) “Does it better” will always beat “did it first.” – Aaron Levie, CEO at Box
2) You don’t have to change who you are, you have to be more of who you are. – Sally Hogshead, New York Times bestselling author
3) If you don’t talk to your customers, how will you know how to talk to your customers? – Will Evans, Design Thinker in Residence @ NYU Stern
4) Reducing your dependency on JS improves the experience for everyone. – Tim Kadlec, Author of “Implementing Responsive Design”
5) As a programmer you read more code than you write. Keep it readable, commented, consistent and explicit. –Sindre Sorhus, Web Developer & Creator of Pageras
6) Photoshop is the most effective way to show your clients what their website will never look like. – Stephen Hay, Author of “Responsive Design Workflow”
7) Instead of prescribing the appearance of individual items, we build systems to anticipate them. – Heydon Pickering, Author of “Apps For All: Coding Accessible Web Applications”
8) Mobile does not reward feature richness. – Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist
9) We need to stop worrying about proving the value of design and just focus on outcomes that provide value. – Denis Weil, Innovation Executive formerly at McDonald’s
10) Culture, leadership and employee engagement are the essentials for great customer experience. – Steve Cannon, President & CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA
11) Asking users to adopt new behaviors or even modify their existing behaviors is very, very hard. – Khoi Vin, VP of UX at Wildcard
12) Usability testing shows you if something is usable. Beta testing shows you if people will actually use it. – Rachel Decker, UX Researcher a HubSpot
13) Usability answers the question, “Can the user accomplish their goal? – Joyce Lee, Human Factors Design at Apple
14) Spend as much time on copy as you do on visuals. – John Zeratsky, Design Partner at Google Ventures
15) I get very uncomfortable when someone makes a design decision without customer contact. – Dan Ritzenthaler, Senior Product Designer at HubSpot
16) If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings. – Tom & David Kelley, Creative Brothers at IDEO
17) When creating content, be empathetic above all else. Try to live the lives of your audience. – Rand Fishkin, Founder at Moz
18) Design for spread and scale. – Denise Gershbein, Creative Director at frog
19) We tend to be distracted by the voices in our own heads telling us what the design should look like. – Michael Bierut, Partner at Pentagram Design
20) Design can solve society’s biggest problems… if we cultivate a love of learning through the design process. – David Sherwin, Director of User Experience at lynda.com
21) You’re designing a product for people, and it doesn’t matter if it’s on Android or iPhone or Windows Phone. – Joey Flynn, Product Designer at Facebook
22) Innovation is often the product of constraint. – Todd Waterbury, Chief Creative Officer at Target
23) Choose the right purpose, people will be attracted, motivated, and unified. – Robert Wong, Vice Present at Google Creative Lab
24) Design is about 3 dimensions and the 5 senses. – Danielle Sacks, Senior Writer at at Fast Company Magazine
25) Are you a @newrelic customer? Tweet me your pet peeve! We must always make our products better! – Lew Cirne, Founder of CEO at New Relic
26) People forget that sometimes doing it the long way teaches you more about how to think and do. – Jessica Hische, Founder & CEO of something, eventually
27) Rule of thumb for UX: More options more problems. – Scott Belsky, Vice President of Products & Community at Adobe
28) Agile is iterative. Design is iterative. Why couldn’t they work together? – Jeff Gothelf, Principal at Neo
29) Critique is at the core of collaboration… Critique is not a design skill. Critique is a life skill. – Adam Connor, Designer at MadPow
30) Focus unswervingly on the customer. – Jesse Hertzberg, Former COO at Squarespace
31) It’s about catching customers in the act, and providing highly relevant and highly contextual information. – Paul Maritz, CEO at Pivotal
32) Most business models have focused on self interest instead of user experience. – Tim Cook, CEO at Apple
33) Empathy is important to understanding users holistically. – Shlomo Goltz, User Researcher at Hearsay Social
34) To be a great designer, you need to look a little deeper into how people think and act. – Paul Boag, Co-Founder of Headscape Limited
35) Power users don’t decide very much based on aesthetics. “Look & Feel” creates appeal, not loyalty. – Joel Marsh, Author of “The Composite Persuasion”
36) Don’t be a complainer; make things better, let it go, or take action to make it better. – Tina Roth Eisenberg, Entrepreneur, Mother, and Blogger
37) Design can speak the tongue of art with the force of commerce. – Frank Chimero, Author of “The Shape of Design”
38) By solving our own most difficult problems, we’re potentially creating immense value for everyone else. – Jason Amunwa, Director of Products at Digital Telepathy
39) If you think responsive’s simple, I feel bad for you son. We got 99 viewports but the iPhone’s just 1. – Josh Brewer, mentor at Designer Fund previously Principal Designer at Twitter
40) It takes no skills to make something crappy. Skills are only required to make something great. – Jared Spool, Founder at User Interface Engineering
41) Speak Human. Feedback is for human beings, so address them as such. Use the words your users use. – Dan Saffer, Author of “Microinteractions”
42) Good design is about process, not product. – Jared Sinclair, Designer and Developer at Bloglovin
43) A single-pixel display doesn’t have to be single-function. – Josh Clark, Founder of Global Moxie
44) If your business isn’t mobile friendly, your business is dead. – Jonathan Stark, Best-selling mobile technology author
45) Our websites are fluid, so our processes and workflows need to match. – Brad Frost, webdesigner, speaker, and consultant
46) The attributes that make certain products engaging also make them potentially addictive. – Nir Eyal, Author of “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”
47) Netflix is unapologetically data driven – we believe in testing ideas in the marketplace. – Rochelle King, Former VP of UX at Netflix
48) Anything we can do to make things simpler and more transparent is a plus. – Cap Watkins, Sr. Design Manager at Etsy
49) Your old site is the best prototype of your new site. – Hoa Lorangers, Director at Nielsen Norman Group
50) Humans have always been emotional and have always reacted to the artifacts in their world emotionally. – Alan Cooper, President of Cooper
