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Tragic Design
Book

Tragic Design

The True Impact of Bad Design and How to Fix It

Jonathan Shariat and Cynthia Savard Saucier
O'Reilly, 2016

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автоматическое преобразование текста в аудио

Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Poor design isn’t simply unpleasant to look at or frustrating to navigate. It can cause irreparable harm. Designers Jonathan Shariat and Cynthia Savard Saucier present compelling case studies of design gone wrong, such as medical software so unnecessarily complex it caused a young cancer patient’s death or a plane that crashed into a mountain because it had an indecipherable display panel. In addition to design that can kill, the authors explain how poor design angers, saddens and frustrates users, causes injustice or denies people access and, therefore, opportunity. While the authors are heavy on explanation, they prove light on solutions. The main one they strongly recommend is conducting user testing and letting the results inform your design decisions. getAbstract recommends this thorough, well-informed overview to design students and professors, investors, software engineers, web developers, product designers, and anyone interested in design and its processes.

Take-Aways

  • Bad design frustrates users, excludes people and causes harm. 
  • When designers fulfill business objectives at the expense of users, poor design results.
  • Bad design can cause physical harm due to flawed processes, lack of usability, dysfunctional features and unnecessary complexity.  

About the Authors

Designer and app developer Jonathan Shariat is Senior Interaction Designer at Intuit and co-host of the Design Review podcast. Director of Design at Shopify Cynthia Savard Saucier specializes in User Experience Design.

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