ACM Book Club #3: User Friendly

The ACM Book Club is back! Join us starting Friday, May 1, to read User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant. 

In User Friendly, Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women’s rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this book unpacks the ways in which the world has been―and continues to be―remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.

In this essential text, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change―an underappreciated but essential history that’s pieced together for the first time. Combining the expertise and insight of a leading journalist and a pioneering designer, User Friendly provides a definitive, thoughtful, and practical perspective on a topic that has rapidly gone from arcane to urgent to inescapable. In User Friendly, Kuang and Fabricant tell the whole story for the first time―and you’ll never interact with technology the same way again.

If you are curious about the answer, grab a copy and come with questions on May 29, 2026 for our special speaker and the book’s co-author Cliff Kuang.
Poster featuring Cliff Kuang and his User Friendly book

Reading Schedule

Week 1 (May 1 - 7)

  • Introduction, Chapter 1

Week 2 (May 8 - 14)

  • Chapters 3, 4, 5

Week 3 (May 15 - 21)

  • Chapters 6, 7, 8

Week 4 (May 22 - 28)

  • Chapters 9, 10, Afterword

reading schedule for AAPI book club


Finale Discussion

Date: May 29, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 6-7 p.m. ET
Zoom Registration: https://acm-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/SPOuKp2uT4WeGG3gwhdWJA 

Speaker Bio

Cliff Kuang is a senior-staff designer at Google DeepMind, working on next-gen AI experiences; previously, he worked on Android’s current and upcoming AI feature, and innovation projects in Search and Gemini. He is also the author of User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play, which the New York Times called "a tour de force” and was named one of the year’s best books by Amazon and Fortune. It is taught in many universities around the world.

Previously, he was head of UX at Fast Company; the founder of Fast Company’s design site, which won a National Magazine Award under his leadership; and an editor at WIRED. As a journalist, he edited over 7,000 stories about design and technology. 

ACM Book Club Series

The ACM Book Club is a communal reading series from the Association for Computing Machinery. Join us for a journey of curiosity, inspiration, and conversation surrounding key issues in computing and technology today. For each session, we join fellow readers around the world to dive into a recent title handpicked by the ACM staff or the community. Each week, we share quotes and author interviews online, concluding with a final conversation with the author or an ACM expert to unpack the book.