“Any design, whether it's for a ship or an airplane, must be done in an...” — Henry Petroski Quote

Any design, whether it's for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.

The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful designs.

Because they are so humbled by their creations, engineers are naturally conservative in their expectations of technology. They know that the perfect system is the stuff of science fiction, not of engineering fact, and so everything must be treated with respect.

Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.

The new Zune may not be an iPod killer, but it does offer a clean interface, great industrial design, HD radio, and a subscription model for music, making it significantly less expensive for big users.

This is what I like about being a designer: You can't really get it until you see it.

I am always locked in my design studio.

I changed the layout of comic books in general. When I came in, layout design wasn't really part of what you did. It was all just panels, panels, panels. So when I came in, I thought, 'Nah, let's change that,' and I designed the page.

I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things.