18 December 2006

Joel Katz - Collected Quotes

"By understanding why things don’t work, you can figure out how to design them so that they do." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"Color can modify - and possibly even contradict – our intuitive response to value, because of its own powerful connotations." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012)

"If the user can’t understand it, the design and the designer have failed." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012)

"Information design, when successful - whether in print, on the web, or in the environment - represents the functional balance of the meaning of the information, the skills and inclinations of the designer, and the perceptions, education, experience, and needs of the audience." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012)

"Geographic maps have the advantage of being true to scale - great for walking. Diagrams have the advantage of being easily imaged and remembered, often true to a non-pedestrian experience, and the ability to open up congestion, reduce empty space, and use real estate efficiently. Hybrids 'mapograms' ? - often have the disadvantages of both map and diagram with none of the corresponding advantages." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"Many concepts and relationships are difficult to grasp because of enormous or microscopic sizes and distances or because of huge disparities of scale. Representing these things with objects with which we have all had experience is a way to start working on the problem." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012)

"Notational complexity almost always results in informational inefficiency." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"Successful information design in movement systems gives the user the information he needs - and only the information he needs - at every decision point." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"The more dimensions used in quantitative comparisons, the larger are the disparities that can be accommodated. As irony would have it, however, the ease of comparison generally diminishes in direct proportion to the number of dimensions involved." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"The universal intelligibility of a pictogram is inversely proportional to its complexity and potential for interpretive ambiguity." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"Use the form that most clearly connotes the differentiations within the data to be visualized; avoid forms that intuitively contradict the data." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"Violating established and functional color conventions makes it more difficult for the audience to understand an information graphic or a map. Respecting them gives the user that much less on which to expend unnecessary energy." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

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