Don't Make Me Think, But Don't Think For Me

For thirty years, Andy Grogan has been on the inside - designing the enterprise software that banks, telecoms, and healthcare companies use to serve millions of customers who have no choice but to use it. He's been in the meetings. He's seen the defaults get set. He's watched dark patterns get shipped by talented designers who told themselves they were solving a business problem. This is the book he wished someone had written twenty years ago.You didn't ask your phone to finish your sentences. You didn't ask your fridge to have opinions about your yogurt. You didn't ask an algorithm to decide what you watch, what you're charged, and whether your job application makes it past the first filter. Don't Make Me Think, But Don't Think For Me is his case for a different kind of technology: one that makes you more capable rather than more dependent, more informed rather than more manipulated, and more in control rather than merely presented with the illusion of it. Funny, sharp, and uncomfortably accurate.

For thirty years, Andy Grogan has been on the inside - designing the enterprise software that banks, telecoms, and healthcare companies use to serve millions of customers who have no choice but to use it. He's been in the meetings. He's seen the defaults get set. He's watched dark patterns get shipped by talented designers who told themselves they were solving a business problem. This is the book he wished someone had written twenty years ago.You didn't ask your phone to finish your sentences. You didn't ask your fridge to have opinions about your yogurt. You didn't ask an algorithm to decide what you watch, what you're charged, and whether your job application makes it past the first filter. Don't Make Me Think, But Don't Think For Me is his case for a different kind of technology: one that makes you more capable rather than more dependent, more informed rather than more manipulated, and more in control rather than merely presented with the illusion of it. Funny, sharp, and uncomfortably accurate.