User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play - Softcover

Kuang, Cliff; Fabricant, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753556650 ISBN 13: 9780753556658

Publisher: WH Allen, 2020

Synopsis

How you use something defines what it does.

Whether for a computer game or a pair of shoes, user design is what makes or breaks a modern product. And as the software that drives our lives gets ever more intuitive and personal, designing the right experience for users matters more than ever.

So how can brilliant design turn function into elegance? Are there lasting principles behind it that we can learn? Why do some designs take root while others wither?

In this entertaining and beautiful book, Cliff Kuang -- a writer at Wired -- and Robert Fabricant -- a brilliant design mind -- guide readers through the myriad ways that designers are reshaping our behaviour, with fascinating stories ranging from healthcare and banking to dating and voting. You'll learn the hidden rules of experience that tap into our deepest desires and habits, and that reframe how we use the defining products of our time.

About this title

Review

"Engrossing and rich with rarely-told stories and interviews, User Friendly gives critical insights to make us better, smarter consumers of design and user-friendly experiences. A must-read for anyone who cares about design and the challenges it has to meet in the coming decades" (Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb)

"“User Friendly starts with the fascinating arc of design in the industrial age, when fortunes could be made by looking more deeply at how we live. But this book brings those insights into the touchscreen age, in which our devices and interfaces sometimes seem to know us better than we know ourselves. Anyone who cares about the fraught but increasingly urgent role that design plays in our lives owes it to themselves to read this hugely compelling book" (Scott Dadich, creator of Abstract: The Art of Design and co-founder of Godfrey Dadich Partners)

"Compulsory reading for the current age, in which business and society have turned to design in pursuit of growth and change. But design means little without empathy, and this book lays out a remarkable tale of how that insight became truth. This essential work shows why design has to be at the center of the human enterprise" (Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO and author of CHANGE BY DESIGN)

"Anyone who cares about the fraught but increasingly urgent role that design plays in our lives owes it to themselves to read this hugely compelling book" (Scott Dadich, former Editor-in-Chief, Wired, and creator of ABTRACT: THE ART OF DESIGN)

"Digital-era design has strived to eliminate the user manual: To make and sell us things that ‘just work.’ But this leaves us uncertain how things work ― or why they’ve been made to work the way they do. User Friendly gives us the answers. It’s the missing manual to the designed world, and that’s just what we need" (Rob Walker, author of THE ART OF NOTICING)

About the Author

Cliff Kuang (Author)
Cliff Kuang is a design strategist at Google, and an award-winning journalist. He was previously the design editor at Wired and Fast Company, where he has edited or written over 7,000 articles on design. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Economist.

Robert Fabricant (Author)
Robert Fabricant is a co-founder of Dalberg’s Design Impact Group and former Vice President of Creative for Frog Design. He has won numerous design awards and has written and spoken widely on design and social impact, for outlets including the Harvard Business Review and SXSW.

Edition details

• Publisher: WH Allen
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0753556650
• ISBN 13: 9780753556658
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416