Jakob Nielsen Design Quotations

It's about time we start using more multimedia to convey information, ... Good multimedia design is similar to film design. The goal is not to be flashy.

It's an extra burden on the user, too. People are on the Web not to enjoy your Web design, but to get something done.

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Users are not designers.

If your users have many questions, it's a failure of your primary site design. It becomes not so much customer support, as much as customer complaints,

A general principle for all user interface design is to go through all of your design elements and remove them one at a time.

Designers are not users.

A bad website is like a grumpy salesperson.

Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop.

To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.

Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems. A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail.