Reviews: Book Reviews

In recent years, the perception of UX design has changed dramatically. In the profession’s early days, less mature organizations frequently treated UX professionals as another type of graphic designer, as though UX designers were synonymous with Web designers. But, in today’s leading organizations, UX design is a strategic capability that drives innovation and enhances competitiveness. Similarly, the role of UX professionals has shifted beyond creating functional—if not delightful—user experiences by applying usability, information architecture, and design principles. Now, UX professionals are applying more of their understanding of psychology and human behavior to devising design principles in the service of persuasion. Read More

Scientists consider homo sapiens to be the most intelligent species among all life on Earth. Primarily through our use of technology and tools, we have become the apex predator and dominate the planet. Thus, despite troublesome viral pandemics such as COVID-19, the shot-in-the-dark possibilities of collisions with an asteroid or space junk, global warming, or the inevitable death of our Sun, we humans should, as a species, expect to have a long and prosperous existence.

While the human species is very successful as a whole, we tend to perform very poorly individually. Perhaps rightly, people imagine themselves the most intelligent form of life on Earth. However, on an individual basis, people are prone to many follies. We eat too much, exercise too little, waste resources, and engage in unhealthy or risky behavior that we know to be harmful—such as smoking or excessive drinking. Decisions on how to administer society are similarly troubled. People overestimate their abilities and knowledge and underestimate how much they should invest for retirement. Read More

One thing we can count on is that the quantity of information is increasing over time. The prevalence of information, its relationship to knowledge, and its impact on people’s decision-making faculties is becoming a more central concern for UX professionals.

Richard Saul Wurman, the author of Information Anxiety, is a trained architect, a very prolific writer, the founder of the TED conference, and a well-known public speaker. Although he wrote this book 30 years ago, the ideas it presents are just as relevant today as they were then, perhaps more so. It’s a credit to the solidity of his thinking that many of his concepts seem to predict the world in which we live today. Read More