About smartphones as he saw them in 1988:

I am waiting for the day when computers are truly portable, small enough to fit into a pocket, to accompany me everywhere. I won’t have to remember everything. It has to be small. It has to be convenient to use. And it has to be relatively powerful, at least by today’s standards. It has to have a full, standard typewriter keyboard and a reasonably large display. Graphics have to be high quality, that’s very important. Memory has to be large—I’d say very large. It should hook up to the telephone; I need to connect it to my home and laboratory computers. Of course, it should be relatively inexpensive. My demands are reasonable. The technologies needed are already here. We can’t quite put them all together yet, not at a reasonable price, but it will exist in imperfect form in five years, possibly in perfect form in ten.

About the keyboard Idea that clearly inspired a certain Russian designer:

Perhaps someday the symbols on keytops will be presented by a minute display on each key, and changing the typewriter from one format to another would be a simple matter of selecting the appropriate computer program. Computer technology could free us from the bonds of standardization; each person could have his or her favorite format.

And about the most important:

“Are you saying,” I began, “that it takes five or six tries to get a design right?”

“At least,” he said.

“But,” I protested, “you said that if the product failed on its first introduction, it would never be given another chance.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then every new product is doomed to fail on its first introduction, no matter how good it is.”

“You seem to be catching on,” said the designer.

Donald A. Norman, “The Design of Everyday Things”