Dan Saffer > Quotes

“Pop-up error alerts are the tool of the lazy. If an error does occur, the microinteraction should do everything in its power to fix it first”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“Ask: is giving this choice to a user going to make the experience more interesting, valuable, or pleasurable? If the answer is no, leave it out.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“The Long Wow is about delivering new experiences or features over time instead of all at once, and by doing so building customer loyalty”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“Being vague is the enemy of a good label.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“requisite variety — the ability to survive under varied conditions. Often this means “fixing” input behind the scenes in code so that all the varied inputs conform to the format that the code/database needs”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“Every noun in your microinteraction should be unique. If you have two of the same nouns, consider combining them. Also make sure that any two (or more) nouns that look the same also behave the same. Don’t have two similar buttons that act completely different. Objects that behave differently should look differently. Likewise, don’t have the same noun work differently in different places.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“Microinteractions are an exercise in restraint, in doing as much as possible with as little as possible. Embrace the constraints and focus your attention on doing one thing well. Mies van der Rohe’s mantra of “less is more” should be the microinteraction designer’s mantra as well.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“Mies van der Rohe’s mantra of “less is more” should be the microinteraction designer’s mantra as well.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“The best, most elegant microinteractions are often those that allow users a variety of verbs with the fewest possible nouns.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“useful, or believe to be beautiful." Thus said the godfather of the Arts & Crafts movement, William Morris. Anyone who has ever spent time (hours, days, weeks, months) creating and (more importantly, refining) a graphic or physical form knows how difficult it can be. It takes practice and training, experience, and taste. A poor font, a button slightly off, the wrong material choice, a garish shade of color can ruin a perfectly fine design. Too many products are made as though aesthetic design decisions are items to be ordered off a Chinese menu. The CEO will say, "I'll take that font, that color, and that material." These arbitrary decisions, made without regard to the effect or the whole, can quickly make a product ugly. The real problem with ugly products is that they not only coarsen the world, they are (seemingly) more difficult to use. As Don Norman rightly pointed out, attractive things work better. "We now have evidence that pleasing things work better, are easier to learn, and produce a more harmonious result," he writes. Creating beautiful things, especially for products with seemingly”
― Dan Saffer, Designing Devices

“There's an old joke among software developers. When something works in an unexpected but strangely effective way, the developers often kid, "Oh, that's not a bug. That's a future." While this is usually a joke, designers can use the same technique of reframing the problem when tackling their own projects. In fact, there's an old joke among designers: "It's not a problem. It's an opportunity.”
― Dan Saffer, Designing for Interaction: Creating Innovative Applications and Devices

“Innovate as a last resort.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, On Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probability.”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions

“Things which are different in order simply to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different,” said Dieter Rams.[”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details

“feedforward — an understanding of what is going to happen before it happens.[17]”
― Dan Saffer, Microinteractions: Full Color Edition: Designing with Details