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“Well-designed products make us feel that someone has been thinking about us, that a nice person took care of the little things for us”

Oliver Reichenstein on ‘quality and thought’ in interface design:

To lay the foundation of human-machine interaction you need to put thought into things and that requires that you put things into thought. This is why most interfaces suck, and most interfaces will continue to suck. No model, method, or tool will change that. Thinking is painful. (…)

Well-designed products do not just save us time, they make us enjoy the time we spend with them. They make us feel that someone has been thinking about us, that a nice person took care of the little things for us.

Puts me in mind of Frank Chimero’s chapter on the importance of empathy in design.


“Are you sure you want to cancel this action?”

Behold the ‘one guard always lies, one guard always tells the truth’ of modal dialog boxes.