I don't understand computers. I've been unable to construct a working mental model of how they do what they do. I can break software by looking at it. I can blow anything up. Without trying. It's sort of like being a dowser. And this extreme elaborate clumsiness on my part is actually something people will pay me for. It's quite wonderful.

Brenda Laurel

Categorized in : Me Computers Looking People

A design isn't finished until someone is using it. by Brenda Laurel

A design isn't finished until someone is using it.

bad-ass badass design

Culture and technology exist in a dynamic reciprocal relationship. Culture comprehends technology through the means of narratives or myths, and those narratives influence the future shape and purposes of technology. The culture-technology circuit is at the heart of cultural evolution.

technology heart mean

I fervently believe in research as a necessity for good design, a... by Brenda Laurel

I fervently believe in research as a necessity for good design, and I teach it that way.

design research believe

You don't have to please everyone-you have to please the user. by Brenda Laurel

You don't have to please everyone-you have to please the user.

users please

Every intelligent being enjoys complexity. by Brenda Laurel

Every intelligent being enjoys complexity.

complexity enjoy intelligent

When artists and philosophers talk only amongst themselves, they ignore the potential of popular culture to become a variety of dialogues with and between everyday people. Its discourse may be productive of desire and pleasure, but popular culture is also a language in which people discuss politics, religion, ethics, and action.

everyday artist people

I think interactive television is doomed. It's a dead end. by Brenda Laurel

I think interactive television is doomed. It's a dead end.

ends television thinking

Reality has always been too small for the human imagination. We'r... by Brenda Laurel

Reality has always been too small for the human imagination. We're always trying to transcend.

small imagination trying reality

The game business arose from computer programs that were written by and for young men in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They worked so well that they formed a very lucrative industry fairly quickly. But what worked for that demographic absolutely did not work for most girls and women.

women business work men

Girls enjoy complex social interaction. Their verbal skills - and their delight in using them - develop earlier than boys'.

complex interaction enjoy skills

When I got started, I was a sideshow. At my first Consumer Electronics Show, in 1977 in Chicago, people came from all over the floor to see the 'lady programmer.' They had me dressed in a turquoise lab coat with my name embroidered on the pocket.

name lady me people

I learned in the computer game business early on that all senses are not equal. The best example is, you're listening to a radio play and you're driving down the road, and suddenly you realize you haven't seen the road in five minutes. It's because your visual cortex has been partying with your imagination, basically.

best you business imagination

When you work with web design companies in San Francisco, you end up with a bunch of twenty-somethings who have their own cultural peculiarities, including obscurity for its own sake. You give those guys a website for a banking institution and they screw it up, because they are designing for themselves.

end you design work

The airplane I usually fly has 450 horse power, and it's all made out of carbon fibre - you can't break it; your body will break before the airplane does.

fly you horse power