User Friendly Book Summary

In 'User Friendly', authors Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant delve into the evolution of design and its profound impact on our daily lives. They explore how user experience shapes technology and our interactions with it, revealing the hidden forces at play in the digital world. From the origins of design thinking to the future of interaction, the book challenges conventional notions of usability. Readers will discover how empathy and human-centered design can transform products into experiences. This thought-provoking exploration not only invites curiosity but also encourages a reevaluation of our relationship with technology.

By Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant

Published: 2019

"Design is not just what it looks like; it’s how it works. The true essence of user-friendly design is the seamless interplay between functionality and experience."

Book Review of User Friendly

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 book 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 text, 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.

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Design is not just what it looks like; it’s how it works. The true essence of user-friendly design is the seamless interplay between functionality and experience.

User Friendly

By Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant