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Laws of UX — Jon’s book, an interview
What does Jakob, Fitts, Miller, Hick, Postel, Kahneman, Norman, von Restorff, Tesler, and Doherty have in common?
Quite a bit. Over the past 80 years or so, these trailblazing psychologists hatched the creative scaffolding from which we create today. Each of their discoveries has advanced our understanding of what makes us tick. Most of these guys had no way of knowing that their discoveries would extend into the areas of study, communication, and industry that were then as fantastic as teleportation is to us today. And that’s simply awesome.
Jon Yablonski succinctly unpacked and applied their discoveries in his book, Laws of UX.
This book offers us an undeniable framework for creative success. This article is about Jon, his journey, and his contribution to our field of practice.
****Disclaimer: I “met” Jon on Linkedin only a couple of weeks ago and I have no financial interest in the book’s performance.****
Read the foreword
It was well after college when I began reading for me, not for a grade. It was then when I started reading forewords. I know, it’s like I had been missing the bigger picture all along. But once I started reading them, I learned that peeking into the author’s mind and motivation is as valuable as the book itself.
It’s a lot like having a quick chat with someone and deciding if this is the kind of person you’d want to talk to for a couple of hours over a beer or two.
Not the cover, but the foreward — that’s my litmus.
Read Jon’s foreward. You’ll learn that Jon is a resourceful creative professional, a loving family man, and a little bit (a lot) of a geek. Also, his reason for writing the book struck a chord with me: to explain…err…justify design decisions in the absence of primary data.
Even so, I have to admit, I thought there was little for me to learn about the topics covered in the book. And boy, was I wrong. I mean, we all know many of these laws, but Jon’s…
