Notable Quotes from SXSW and the Information Architecture Summit
from SXSW 2006:
“It’s not about the productor tool, it’s about what people DO with the tools…”
and stated a little bit differently…
“It’s not about the tools, it’s about what the tool allows you to do.”
-Kathy Sierra
“Brains care about conversational language.”
-Kathy Sierra
“How do people think? Technology should map onto that.”
-Rashmi Sinha
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
-Herbert Simon
“User research is the thing from which you innovate—not the thing you create to.”
-Jeff Veen
“He who can define the problem can define the solution.”
-???
from the IA Summit:
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
-John Zapolski
“I cannot understand, nor do I want to understand! I want to believe!”
-Michel Foucault
“The MFA is the new MBA.”
-Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind
“Business Education does not prepare leaders for dealing with uncertainty.”
-Patrick Whitney, Institute of Design, IIT
“We need a broad generalist to successfully run large, complex organizations.”
-Richard Kovarevich, CEO Wells Fargo & Co
“Businesses that are fundamentally successful empower people to do things.”
-Scott Hirsh
“We make our buildings, and thereafter they make us.”
-Winston Churchill
“Strategy balances contradictory forces.”
-Victor Lombardi
“Designers are the engine of organic growth.”
-Victor Lombardi, discussing good financial growth
“I’m technology agnostic until the technology interferes with my designs.”
-Chris Farnum
“We’ve organized ideas based on how we organize things.”
-David Weinberger, commenting on taxonomies in the virtual space
“Any question you ask of the web (systems) is going to reveal cracks in many other areas.”
-James Melzer, discussing Enterprise Information Architecture
“Content has not changed. But the message has changed based on form.”
-Trevor Van Gorp, commenting on submissive vs dominant designs in interaction design
“The interface needs to mirror the user to a large extent.”
-Trevor Van Gorp
“People need information in their real life, and the web is not real life.”
-Thomas Vander Wal
“What action follows information use?”
-Thomas Vander Wal
“Any successful console game now allows a user to jump right in and start using it, and teaches along the way.”
-???, commenting on how user interfaces might work in the near future
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