User Friendly
How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play
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- ¥1,400
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- ¥1,400
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'A tour de force, an engrossing fusion of scholarly research, professional experience and revelations from intrepid firsthand reporting' -- New York Times
USER FRIENDLY is a must-read for anyone who loves well-designed products-and for the innovators aspiring to make them.
It seems like magic when some new gadget seems to know what we want before we know ourselves. But why does some design feel intrinsically good, and why do some designs last forever, while others disappear? User Friendly guides readers through the hidden rules governing how design shapes our behaviour, told through fascinating stories such as what the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island reveals about the logic of the smartphone; how the pressures of the Great Depression and World War II created our faith in social progress through better product design; and how a failed vision for Disney World yielded a new paradigm for designed experience.
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Journalist Kuang debuts with this engrossing history of how the design of commercial products and technological innovations came to be singularly focused on the user experience. It proves a sprawling and multifaceted story, with side excursions into near-miss nuclear disasters, WWII fighter plane crashes, and the latest developments in driverless cars. The user-friendly ethos, Kuang explains, requires learning "why people behave as they do" so as to "design around their foibles and limitations." Not hesitating to get philosophical, he notes that this goal represents a remarkable intellectual shift from "the Enlightenment's faith in the perfectibility of mankind's reasoning." One of the most intriguing chapters considers the use of metaphors in design for example, the deeply entrenched metaphor of the "desktop" in Apple products and the value of finding new metaphors. The work also includes profiles of influential designers such as Henry Dreyfuss who worked on everything from waffle irons and school desks to thermostats and washing machines and, in an afterword from coauthor Fabricant, cofounder of Dalberg Design, helpful tips for fellow designers on incorporating user-friendly practices. The result is an erudite and insightful exploration of a revolution in human thinking that most people have probably never considered.
