Articles

Unfortunately, too many companies build their products betting users will do what they make them do instead of letting them do what they want to do. Companies fail to change user behaviours because they do not make their service enjoyable for its own sake, often asking users to learn new, unfamiliar actions instead of making old routines easier.

Once you start creating things, you realize that everything has intention behind it.

It might help to pose two caricatures hypothetical extremes. One is engineering as problem solving, the other is design as creating.

The designer wants to create a solution that fits in a deeper situational or social sense.

Design is messy. Engineering… is not supposed to be messy. The designer can handle the messiness and ambiguity and is willing to trust intuition.

Successful design is done in teams.

I think a lot of people see simplicity as the lack of clutter. And that’s not the case at all. True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, ‘Yeah, well, of course.’ Where there’s no rational alternative.

The artist is a collector of things, imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery but he is omnivorous.