What are you reading?

Its kind of 1970’s touchy-feely and engenders a righteous response from the reader, a la Atlas Shrugged does with college freshmen (disclaimer, that was me at one time) - but the arguments and advocacy for a thing called Quality should resonate with any good designer. Loved the bit about the aluminum beer can shim.

I’m reading ‘Understanding Industrial Design’ by King and Chang (ex-IDEO ID guys). The book is targeted toward UX designers (or other collaborators) to learn about ID. I’m finding it useful and enlightening, like how reading a history of your own country written by a foreigner can be enlightening (for example - De La Démocratie en Amérique by Tocqueville, or The Right Nation by Micklethwait.)

hmm, I’m going to have to give that King/Chang book a read and pass it on to my peers.

I’m trying to burn through it and pass it on to my group at work. Definitely recommended - the authors write quite well (for designers!) and the examples and stories they use to communicate design topics like using all senses, and understanding the spectrum between hard controls and on-screen interfaces are all contemporary and relevant.

I’m 30 pages into The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. I feel like 2016 is my year to find books that I wish I had read 10 years ago.

The thing the book reminds me most of is repeated comments by Yo about how designers qualify ideas versus marketing/sales/etc. I don’t know if this summary will make sense, but I’m going to try: the premise is that best management practices work great at increasing performance within a product architecture. However, those best practices actively discourage innovating on the product architecture.

In any case, I think designers do a better job at seeing those architecture shifts. A good example that I see all the time in Canada is manufacturers thinking the advantage of Asian manufacturing is cost. I’ve seen these manufacturers invest millions in new machinery, hundreds of thousands in consultants and training and then they drop their margins. At the same time, some new entrant manufacturers a high end product in Asia and takes a huge profit. In other words, the domestic manufacturer focuses on performance (in this case, cost per unit) but misses out on the bigger change (because of the diversity of suppliers in Asia, you don’t need to sink millions into machinery and tooling to make a new product).

Back to the book though, I’m anxious to see what the author suggests for management changes to see if corresponds to my thinking on the subject.

I just finished Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. It was a pretty interesting story about a dystopian future where pretty much all jobs have been automated and the New World is being run by engineers. The fact that it was written in 1952 blows my mind.

Highly recommend it to all you ID-ers/manufacturers out there

great book, I’ve read that one as well. I love a good Vonnegut read. ironically a lot of futurists are again predicting this issue.

I think the engineers can be automated too, imho.

Well. I don’t like reading books. I just like to read a small article or a short story. I don’t have much patience to read long stories. I had undergone a physiotherapy procedure in Toronto due to severe leg pain. So I am currently researching about the secret of a healthy leg. And I found a few interesting articles. One among them is:

I finished the Innovator’s Dilemma. Highly recommend it. Gives a lot of business ammunition to design arguments.

Now, I’m half way through “The Shock of the Old”. I would avoid the book and just read a review of it. It’s central argument is interesting: instead of looking at innovation as a chronological series of events, look at the use in time and space. However, the book feels repetitive and lacks the kind of insights about old technology being used today that I was hoping it was going to contain.

Just curious here. How many books per year are you reading?

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I would say about 6 books / year. I read way too many blogs (and C77 forum posts) to read more books.

I like reading, feel depressed if I can’t look forward to a few pages (or more) at night before retiring. Probably 12-20 per year. If you add in children’s books I read about 700 a year.

Just finished:
Less Than Zero
Matterhorn (brutal novel about Vietnam war)

Currently:
Martian Chronicles
Tropic of Cancer

I’m the same. I probably read about 12 books a year bit by bit before I go to sleep. All SciFi novels.

On top of that I might read a couple of business type books here and there. At least the first and last chapters :slight_smile:

If we are counting children’s books, my son and I just started Scooby-Doo Teams Up issues 1 and 2. I have fond memories of Scooby-Doo and the Batman TV series, and the comic book is giving me a few inside jokes to keep me entertained. Meanwhile, my son just loves Batman, so he is loving it.

Just read “Kill em and Leave” great short read on James Brown. Beautifully written. Just started “Wind, Sand and Stars” by Saint-Exupery. Old book about his time flying mail from France to north Africa. Im a sucker for adventure books

+1 for Wind, Sand, and Stars. Wish I knew enough French to read it in the original text. All of those St-Ex short stories are good, compiled in ‘Airman’s Odyssey’. He has a way of making strong, clear statements about the goodness in life, having courage to do dangerous work, and creating bonds between people.

Oh good to know, will check out his other work. I too wish i could have read it in the original French, really beautiful writing. Have you ever read Beryl Markham or Roald Dahls book when he was in the RAF? Both fantastic

Roald Dahl is a perennial favorite, will definitely look into that, thanks.

Short read, but super interesting