Alan Cooper Quotes

#1. Define what the product will do before you design how the product will do it.

Alan Cooper

#2. A powerful tool in the early stages of developing scenarios is to pretend the interface is magic. If your persona has goals and the product has magical powers to meet them, how simple could the interaction be? This kind of thinking is useful to help designers look outside the box.

Alan Cooper

#3. What Microsoft is really good at is endlessly iterating and revving - incrementally improving things that already exist - and those things that already exist are generally acquired from the outside.

Alan Cooper

#4. Ironically, the thing that will likely make the least improvement in the ease of use of software-based products is new technology. There is little difference technically between a complicated, confusing program and a simple, fun, and powerful product.

Alan Cooper

#5. You Don't Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted!

Alan Cooper

#6. A lot of people think, and Microsoft is happy to let them think, that all great things are invented by Microsoft. In fact, very, very little has been invented by Microsoft.

Alan Cooper

#7. Design is not so much a design issue as a power struggle.

Alan Cooper

#8. Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.

Alan Cooper

#9. No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it.

Alan Cooper

#10. Just how do I design if not with prototyping? An excellent question. The short answer is 'on paper.'

Alan Cooper

#11. Computers no longer interface with humans
they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival.

Alan Cooper

#12. We're building what I call 'software apartheid.' We're in the process of creating a divided society: those who can use technology on one side, and those who can't on the other. And it happens to divide neatly along economic lines.

Alan Cooper

#13. There's only one thing you can use against pure logic, and that's common sense.

Alan Cooper

#14. Reducing a product's definition to a list of features and functions ignores the real opportunity - orchestrating technological capability to serve human needs and goals.

Alan Cooper

#15. There's a fundamental problem with how the software business does things. We're asking people who are masters of hard-edged technology to design the soft, human side of software as well. As a result, they make products that are really cool - if you happen to be a software engineer.

Alan Cooper

#16. If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person.

Alan Cooper

#17. E-mail is the most influential application ever to appear on a personal computer, and it remains sadly deficient.

Alan Cooper

#18. Form follows function straight to hell.

Alan Cooper

#19. One of the most heinous, insidious lies is the notion that you have to be an asshole to be a successful business person.

Alan Cooper

#20. Usability methods are like sandpapering a chair. If you are making a chair, the sandpaper can make it smoother. But no amount of sandpaper will turn a chair into a table.

Alan Cooper

#21. The payoff of a customer-centric approach to software and digital product design is substantial and long-lasting for both companies and their customers.

Alan Cooper

#22. Well madam, have you looked in the mirror and seen the state of your nose? Boxing is my excuse. What's yours?

Alan Cooper

#23. It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.

Alan Cooper

#24. I think the phrase 'computer-literate' is an evil phrase. You don't have to be 'automobile-literate' to get along in this world. You don't have to be 'telephone-literate.' Why should you have to be 'computer-literate'?

Alan Cooper

#25. Men do not greet one another like this ... except perhaps at rugby club dinners.

Alan Cooper

#26. It's harder than you might think to squander millions of dollars, but a flawed software development process is a tool well suited to the job.

Alan Cooper

#27. It's cheaper to put an entire microprocessor in your car key, microwave, or cell phone than it is to put in discrete chips and electronic components. Thus, a new technical economy drives the design of the product.

Alan Cooper