Kathy Sierra
Programming instructor and game developer; co-creator of O’Reilly’s Head First book series and author of Badass: Making Users Awesome (2015). Wrote the Creating Passionate Users blog from 2004 to 2007 and the Serious Pony blog from 2013 to 2014.
Kathy Sierra did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsI now believe the most dangerous time for a woman with online visibility is the point at which others are seen to be listening, "following", "liking", "favoriting", retweeting.
↗Trouble at the Koolaid Pointweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsTwitter, for all its good, is a hate amplifier. Twitter boosts signal power with head-snapping speed and strength. Today, Twitter (and this isn't a complaint about Twitter, it's about what Twitter enables) is the troll's best weapon for attacking you.
↗Trouble at the Koolaid Pointweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsYou're probably more likely to win the lottery than to get any law enforcement agency in the United States to take action when you are harassed online, no matter how viscously and explicitly.
↗Trouble at the Koolaid Pointweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 12 months earlier
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Their wordsBecause unless you're a paid performer - musician, comedian, motivational speaker - you are not the reason they came to the conference. They are sitting in your session because of someone that matters far more to them than you: themselves. They are there for their own experiences, and "watching you present" is not one of those experiences.
↗Presentation Skills Considered Harmfulweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsAnd if it's a user experience, then what am I? Ah... now we're at the place where stage fright starts to dissolve. Because if the presentation is a user experience, than I am just a UI. That's it. I am a UI. Nothing more. And what's a key attribute of a good UI? It disappears. It does not draw attention to itself. It enables the user experience, but is not itself the experience.
↗Presentation Skills Considered Harmfulweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBecause what matters most is NOT the UX but the POST-UX UX. What happens after and as a result of the user experience? The best software and product designers know this. The best game designers know this. The best authors know this. The best filmmakers know this. What happens after what happens happens?
↗Presentation Skills Considered Harmfulweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsWillpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources.
↗Your app makes me fatweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIf your UX asks the user to make choices, for example, even if those choices are both clear and useful, the act of deciding is a cognitive drain.
↗Your app makes me fatweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Their wordsWhat you consume here, you take from there. Not just their attention, not just their time, but their ability to be the person they are when they are at their best.
↗Your app makes me fatweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 years earlier
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Their wordspeople place an extremely high value on quality learning and support materials.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsContext-sensitive FAQs--done right--can make a dramatic difference in software, and greatly reduce the user's cognitive load.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBottom line: never underestimate the value of providing fabulous training materials in getting--and keeping--users motivated to get better.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThe good news is this: in the he-who-does-the-best-job-of-getting-his-customers-past-the-suck-threshold-wins world that's beginning to emerge, companies may need teachers more than marketers.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBut people can't learn and improve without thinking, so any marketing approach based on helping users get better needs to use emotions to enhance thinking, not prevent it.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsShould we be worried about the hot new research known as neuromarketing? Yes. But it's going to happen regardless of what we do.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 14 months earlier
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Our reading
Their wordsWhile it's oh so tempting to just step in and DO IT, micromanagement doesn't scale.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBut it's a downward spiral-- Micromanagement creates zombies. Of course micromanagers don't actually create zombies--they simply inspire (or force) zombieism on the job.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe companies I love to hate are those that allow only a single career path--the "management track".
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 months earlier
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Their wordsWe believe that those providing the products and services that give the most "I Rule" experiences, without tipping too far over the Happy User Peak, will be the most successful.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Continuing to add new features eventually leads to a decline in usability and maintenance.
Their wordsAnd besides, continuing to pile on new features eventually leads to an endless downhill slide toward poor usability and maintenance.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsFighting and clawing for market share by competing solely on features is an unhealthy, unsustainable, and unfun way to live.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 days earlier
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Their wordsThe more we analyze and reverse-engineer passion, the more we see learning and growth as a key component. No, not a key--the key.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe more knowledge and skill someone has, the more passionate they become, and the more passionate they become, the more they try to improve their knowledge and skills.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsIt's not what you sell, it's what you teach that matters. Or rather, what you help someone learn.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 months earlier
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Our reading
Instructors should focus on making students smarter rather than proving their own expertise.
Their wordsMost of the time students don't CARE how smart you are. They come in assuming that you're supposed to be here, so stop trying to prove how smart you are and get on with helping them get smarter.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Effective teaching involves designing interactive situations rather than just delivering content.
Their wordsOf course this means you, as the instructor, have to design and enable situations that cause things to happen. Exercises, labs, debates, discussions, heavy interaction. In other words, things that THEY do, not things that YOU do (except that you create the scenarios).
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThat the instructor or author is simply proving their own technical prowess (in what we believe is a misguided attempt to help you), but at your expense.
↗Creating Passionate Usersweb.archive.org 3rd of 3 in this piece