User Friendly

How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play

By: Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant

Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass

Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's Summary

2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year

This program includes material read by the authors.

In User Friendly, Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need.

Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women’s rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this audiobook unpacks the ways in which the world has been - and continues to be - remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.

In this essential program, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change - an underappreciated but essential history that’s pieced together for the first time. Combining the expertise and insight of a leading journalist and a pioneering designer, User Friendly provides a definitive, thoughtful, and practical perspective on a topic that has rapidly gone from arcane to urgent to inescapable. In User Friendly, Kuang and Fabricant tell the whole story for the first time - and you’ll never interact with technology the same way again.

©2019 Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

I now 'get' the role of design

As a non designer, really helped me understand what design is and implications of design beyond looks and convenience. I didn't appreciate how much design shapes behavior. I found the history and the stories quite compelling and informative without being laborious.

Underwhelming real life examples

The bias of this book was too much for me. It uses some real life, contemporary examples to make points, but the conclusions are so slanted and biased that it made the book hard to listen to.

I tried to think "well, this is just one perspective and I should think critically about the author's point of view", but in some cases, I disagreed with the analysis so much, that it felt like I was wasting my team reading chapters (take the Tesla autopilot versus Audi self-driving chapter).

I did learn a fair amount from the first 50%, but I couldn't stomach to go any further. The introductory history on industrial design is quite interesting.

Great history of ID and HF

Really enjoyed this book, almost wish it was longer. would have loved a little more about the user friendliness of physical products, but they did a much better job than most books I've read lately that only seem to talk about app development.

👍

I really enjoy the book. My first social design engineering book. A lot of designs that I take them for granted on life.

important and fascinating presentation re design

should be mandatory reading for all designers of anything and all ergonomists, human factors professionals, and anyone appreciates and cares about good design.