I found out about UX book club about 5 years ago but never got round to going.
I got an invite to UX book club and said it would talk about ‘The best interface is no interface’. The book title really grabbed me so I bought it. Once I had read it I got another email notification to go to the UX book club. I decided this would be interesting to experience and feedback to you guys.
The UX book club is a strange event, on the meetup it looks like there’s going to be over 40 people coming, which in reality it was eight. This was a much better amount of people for a book discussion.
UX book club consists of having some food, drinks and discuss the book of the month. The book is announced one month before the event to give you some time to read it.
This is my view of the book:
Tone of book
Ranty pub conversations about the problems with technology. (Some genuine laugh out loud moments).
Memorable quotes
On putting a screen on a vending machine – “Order your favourite drinks through a series of menus and error messages”
View of UX – “UX stopped being about people, and started being about rounded rectangles and parallax animations.”
What I didn’t like
Very exaggerated Solutions are not very ‘real worldly’
Examples are very specific
Very biased
Mostly web based ‘research’
What the reality is
UX designers should wireframe
Apps are an established technology, of course companies will make them Users see companies as ‘sites or apps’ – comfortable
Screens are not a bad thing
You get paid for delivering digital experiences
General summary
UX book club is cool
Great examples for stakeholder management Challenge the screen
Krishna bloody hates screens
People are uniquely special
The reality – not so simple to apply Krishnas thinking
Overall I give it 4/5 – I recommend giving this book a read, its pretty quick to get through and pretty fun.
