Book review: “White Hat UX”

When Trine told me she’d been writing a book for the past year I knew it would be good. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at a couple of the same events as her in the last few years and have since followed her work. Her talks gave me a great insight on designing for children — an important topic that we should know more about but that can sound daunting at first.

White Hat UX is a great reminder for experienced designers of the kind of work we should be striving to do, and an excellent introduction to the topic for UX novices, as it dedicates some time to explain some of the basic concepts.

Trine’s book, co-authored with Kim Andersen and Martin Michael Frederiksen, focuses on doing things right. It goes into detail about how we can improve our users’ experience of our sites and products, and our bottom line, without resorting to dubious design practices.

“Day-to-day business is about traffic measurements, conversion rates, cost per click, page views, uptime, media convergence and all the three-letter acronyms of IT business.

“What has become of style, tone, good language, identity, branding and positioning? They are still there, but are struggling to keep afloat among the flurry of new technologies all driven by metrics.”

—White Hat UX, page 53

My favourite aspect of the book is that it holds design professionals to the high standards that we should all want our work to meet, without excuses. Our work can influence the lives of people in ways that we can’t even image, and as professionals with this kind of influence it’s important for us to revisit our practices and consider what we do regularly throughout our careers.

The best part: the book is available for free on Amazon until the 22nd of April. Go get it — it would be rude not to.