Design
"Design is the art of gradually applying constraints until only one solution remains"
Unknown.
"... there are no simple 'right' answers for most web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need--carefully thought out, well executed, and tested."
Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 136
"While I acknowledge that there is a need for art, fun, and a general good time on the web, I believe that the main goal of most web projects should be to make it easy for customers to perform useful tasks."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 11
"A general principle for all user interface design is to go through all of your design elements and remove them one at a time. If the design works as well without a certain design element, kill it."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 22
"Simplicity always wins over complexity, especially on the web where every five bytes saved is a millisecond less download time."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 22
"Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 99
"None of our current crop of software based products is capable of delivering power and pleasure to people outside of the techno-smitten minority. The engineering community says merely that users will have to become 'computer literate'. I believe history will view that phrase in the same way that we treat Marie Antoinette’s famously condescending phrase, 'Let them eat cake'. The French Revolution gave food to the masses, and the coming design revolution will give technology to the masses."
Alan Cooper, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, p. 244.
"Programmers, deep in their thoughts of algorithms and code, 'design' user interfaces the same way that miners 'design' the landscape with their cavernous pits and enormous tailing piles. The software interface design process alternates between the accidental and the non-existent."
Alan Cooper, About Face 2.0, p. 9.
Adaptive design
"Because there is no way of knowing how large a screen your users have, you should design for all screen resolutions..."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 29
"... users have different preferences with respect to font size, so ensure that your designs work well with both larger and smaller fonts than your personal preferences."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 29
"... design should begin by identifying a human or societal need--a problem worth solving--and then fulfill that need by tailoring technology to the specific, relevant human factors."
Kim Vicente, The Human Factor, p. 45.