Everything we use, from social media, to our homes, to our highways, was designed by someone. But how did they decide on what was good for the rest of us? What did they get right and where have they let us down? And what can we learn from the way these experts think that can help us in how we make decisions in our own lives?

The goals:

• To invite people to think clearly about how this person-made world is designed
• To teach anyone to see people, places and things more like our best designers do
• To give designers something they can share with coworkers, clients and friends to explain what they do and why
• To have fun while understanding the world better. Life is too short.

Everyone is curious about why things are the way they are, and this book will use design as the lens for explaining the civilized world. We need more people who appreciate design, or are design literate, and this book will help fill that need. The author is Scott Berkun.

Non-goals: teaching people to be designers, pretense, sophisticated terminology, settling turf-battles, UX vs UI vs IA vs whatever got a new name this week, defining new paradigms (existing ones work well if handled wisely), comprehensiveness (it needs to be a short and simple book).

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