User Friendly

callan reviewed User Friendly by Cliff Kuang

a great user experience design history/primer

4 stars

I really enjoyed listening to/reading this one. While occasionally a little too rose-tinted-specs about capitalism, design, and white-savior-design-thinking, I thought this was not only a great rundown of how design has shaped modern life but also a succinct starter kit for wtf UX even is. The chapter about Disney Magic Bands and Imagineers vs. infrastructure is a really important object lesson that I'm gonna share with students. Good work here, dudes.

Ori reviewed User Friendly by Cliff Kuang

An inspiring read

5 stars

This book started by showing examples of bad and good design on the past that changed the course of history. It clearly explained how the decisions lead to those results allowing me to clearly understand the situation. Design is nuanced and complicated since it's dealing with humans so having these examples instead of just this is what you do makes it very approachable. It made me realize how important design is to our world and how it can lead us to better services. One narrative that is unrelated to the book itself, but how the author wrote this book is that you can see the progression from on the past they were happy or at least okay with design principles that players like Apple brought, but when they started to talk about Disney, Carnival and Facebook they really started to shift the narrative of design. It was amusing to me …

This book started by showing examples of bad and good design on the past that changed the course of history. It clearly explained how the decisions lead to those results allowing me to clearly understand the situation. Design is nuanced and complicated since it's dealing with humans so having these examples instead of just this is what you do makes it very approachable. It made me realize how important design is to our world and how it can lead us to better services. One narrative that is unrelated to the book itself, but how the author wrote this book is that you can see the progression from on the past they were happy or at least okay with design principles that players like Apple brought, but when they started to talk about Disney, Carnival and Facebook they really started to shift the narrative of design. It was amusing to me because they described perfectly how I feel about tech. You start with enthusiasm and then you get an "Oppenheimer moment" where you realize how harmful tech is. At the end of the book they expose their design principles that way you can take some practical techniques and not only examples. The book kept me engaged with its narrative and I highly recommend it.