If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.
Interpretation
Software should be designed to be user-friendly and behave in a manner that is pleasant and supportive.
This quote emphasizes the importance of user-centered design in software development. It suggests that by making software behave in ways that embody traits of a likable person—such as being respectful, generous, and helpful—developers can create a more engaging and enjoyable experience for users, leading to greater overall satisfaction and success.
In practice
During a tech conference presentation about user experience, one might quote this to emphasize the need for empathy in design.
Run for your lives-the computers are invading. Awesomely powerful computers tackling ever more important tasks with awkward, old-fashioned interfaces. As these machines leak into every corner of our lives, they will annoy us, infuriate us, and even kill a few of us. In turn, we will be tempted to kill our computers, but we won't dare because we are already utterly, irreversibly dependent on these hopeful monsters that make modern life possible.
Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.
To our human minds, computers behave less like rocks and trees than they do like humans, so we unconsciously treat them like people.... In other words, humans have special instincts that tell them how to behave around other sentient beings, and as soon as any object exhibits sufficient cognitive function, those instincts kick in and we react as though we were interacting with another sentient human being.
No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it.
You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.
Ultimately, it's not going to be about man versus machine. It is going to be about man with machines.
The expansive anarchy of the Internet continues to lull us into believing that, because we can see something, that something should be seen. Because we can say something, there is something that must be said.
People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts. Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good.
For the last 10 years, I've felt increasing pressure to stop shooting film and start shooting video, but I've never understood why. It's cheaper to work on film, it's far better looking, it's the technology that's been known and understood for a hundred years, and it's extremely reliable.
Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.