As a genre, videogames take our minds on journeys, and we can control and experience them much more interactively than passively – especially when they are well-designed.

In the ’70s and ‘80s there was an attempt in K-12 to teach science through art or art through science. The challenge today is how do you build the ethos of art and design into the academy of science.

Art shows us that human beings still matter in a world where money talks the loudest, where computers know everything about us, and where robots fabricate our next meal and also our ride there.

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

Design is about crafting an experience that is unfamiliar enough to feel novel, yet familiar enough to instill confidence.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Good problem-seekers are in higher demand than good problem-solvers.

We seem to forget that innovation doesn’t just come from equations or new kinds of chemicals, it comes from a human place. Innovation in the sciences is always linked in some way, either directly or indirectly, to a human experience.

If there were a prerequisite for the future successful digital creative, it would be the passion for discovery.

Growing up, I found I was good at two things: Art and Math. To hear my parents say it, though, it was only, ‘John is good at Math.’

Too little confidence, and you’re unable to act; too much confidence, and you’re unable to hear.

When people say, ‘I don’t get art’ … that means art is working.

I don’t like creating software anymore. It’s too exact. It’s like karate; there’s no room for error.

I don’t really love computers.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

If you have no fear, no one has power over you.

The best scientists that I’ve met are those that are humanists and scientists at the same time.

Videogames are indeed design: They’re sophisticated virtual machines that echo the mechanical systems inside cars.

Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form.

Research universities need excellent means to communicate and express their results to regular people.

All I want to be is, someone that makes, new things and, thinks about them.

The best designers in the world all squint when they look at something. They squint to see the forest from the trees – to find the right balance. Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less.

People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done.

If you are going to have less things, they have to be great things.

Our economy is built upon convergent thinkers, people that execute things, get them done. But artists and designers are divergent thinkers: they expand the horizon of possibilities.

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

The problem isn’t how to make the world more technological. It’s about how to make the world more humane again.

Artists change how we see the world – and that can have value in the way people do business.

Technology makes possibilities. Design makes solutions. Art makes questions. Leadership makes actions.

My role is to find strategic insights as to where design can have the most business impact. A designer can bring a viewpoint of not just aesthetics, but economics and usage.

One of the challenges to our nation today is overcoming the notion that art is kind of a nice-to-have, when in reality art is a need-to-have.

I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn’t have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn’t have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.

Anyone with a computer and a design program can create a page layout. But unless you’re trained in design, it won‘t look very good and it won’t communicate very well.