Rating: 5 out of 5

Well written and easy to read. Some things I’d thought about before. Many things I hadn’t. Many of the thoughts and ideas are illustrated by personal and real examples which makes those ideas stickier for me.

Some highlights I made at the time are:

“Making digital products friendly isn’t enough to make them feel human”

“Real life is complicated. It’s full of joy and excitement, sure, but also stress, anxiety, fear, shame, and crisis”

“There’s no checklist for the human experience, no easy way to ensure our products won’t cause harm”

“When we make things for people at their worst they’ll work that much better when people are at their best”

“How can I make this even better? but also how can I keep this from inflicting pain?”

“Whenever you tell yourself nobody would ever act a certain way or come to your site in certain situations, that moment should raise a huge red flag in your head. Written on that flag in block letters should be the words UNSUBSTANTIATED ASSUMPTION”

“With a core mission of connecting people and a massive user base, Facebook is often the first to stumble into these tricky subjects- because when something goes wrong for just 5% of users, it affects more than 50 million users”

“We think the concept of stress cases is so valuable”

“Research has consistently found that cognitive resources are finite: if you expend them on one thing you have fewer left for other things”

“Identifying and mapping out stress cases shows fractures in our work that we might miss, leaving them open for someone in crisis to stumble into. By thinking through these scanties we get better at prioritising information, removing fluff, and staying focussed on our users”

“ask users only for what we truly need, and be clear about what we’ll do with what they give us. And we can provide context, explaining why we want information and disclosing when and how a user’s actions affect what happens next”

“Being as intentional as possible is the best tool we have to prevent errors and biases - our industry talks a lot about empathy, but when we say compassion, we’re talking about something deeper”

“Compass is more than being nice. It’s accepting people as they come - in all their pain, with all their challenges - and not just feeling empathy toward them, but doing something with that empathy”

“Compassion is something we all need to practice, not something we are”

“No one is using our services in a truly ideal state: distraction-free, on the latest equipment, while emotionally content, and with as much time as it takes”

“Accessibility consultant Karl Groves has argued that there are only three business cases for anything - it will make money - it will save money - it will decrease risk”

Originally posted to my Goodreads account