Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

Monkfish was originally called goosefish, orange roughy was once called slimehead, and sea urchins were once whore’s eggs.

Even when you are designing for the able-bodied, it is a good principle to assume that the user is operating under constraints.

was for some reason thought that the purpose of food was to provide the necessary minerals, vitamins, protein and energy, and that the job of the food industry was to supply them in as efficient a form possible.

You will never uncover unconscious motivations unless you create an atmosphere in which people can ask apparently fatuous questions without fear of shame.

‘There are two key steps that a mathematician uses. He uses intuition to guess the right problem and the right solution and then logic to prove it.’

In trying to encourage rational behaviour, don’t confine yourself to rational arguments.

The more data you have, the easier it is to find support for some spurious, self-serving narrative. The profusion of data in future will not settle arguments: it will make them worse.

most of the achievements of consumer capitalism were never planned

And the best way for evolution to encourage or prevent a behaviour is to attach an emotion to it.