AMAZON BEST BOOKS OF 2019 PICK

FORTUNE WRITERS AND EDITORS' RECOMMENDED BOOKS OF 2019 PICK

"User Friendly is a tour de force, an engrossing fusion of scholarly research, professional experience and revelations from intrepid firsthand reporting."
--EDWARD TENNER, The New York Times Book Review

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.

Author: Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: MCD
Published: 11/19/2019
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.1lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.60w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780374279752


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/23/2019
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/2019
Library Journal 11/01/2019 pg. 103

About the Author

Cliff Kuang is an award-winning journalist and user experience (UX) designer. He was previously the head of UX at Fast Company, as well as its design editor. In that role, he founded Co.Design, one of the world's leading design publications.

Robert Fabricant is the former Vice President of Creative for Frog Design, one of the leading industrial-design studios of the last fifty years, and an award-winning cofounder and partner at Dalberg Design.