Summary of Cliff Kuang & Robert Fabricant's User Friendly

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The worst nuclear accident in American history began with a clog in the basement of a lonely hour. The plant’s operators were unable to figure out what the hell was going on, and the taint of that chaos would linger for hours.

#2 The control room was extremely busy that day. The water level in the reactor’s pulmonary loop, which cools the reactor, was dropping. The pressure in the system was rising. The men switched off the emergency pumps to keep them from adding more water to the core.

#3 At 6 a. m. , the catastrophe has taken on a sickening momentum. No one knows how much radiation is leaking from the reactor core, and instruments in the control room aren’t making sense.

#4 When you look hard at machine disasters, you can usually find a design problem. The only reason I had thought to explore the history of Three Mile Island was because I suspected that when you look at monumental machine disasters, you can usually find a design problem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822536425

IRB Media

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Insights on Cliff Kuang & Robert Fabricant's User Friendly

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The worst nuclear accident in American history began with a clog in the basement of a lonely hour. The plant’s operators were unable to figure out what the hell was going on, and the taint of that chaos would linger for hours.

#2

The control room was extremely busy that day. The water level in the reactor’s pulmonary loop, which cools the reactor, was dropping. The pressure in the system was rising. The men switched off the emergency pumps to keep them from adding more water to the core.

#3

At 6 a. m. , the catastrophe has taken on a sickening momentum. No one knows how much radiation is leaking from the reactor core, and instruments in the control room aren’t making sense.

#4

When you look hard at machine disasters, you can usually find a design problem. The only reason I had thought to explore the history of Three Mile Island was because I suspected that when you look at monumental machine disasters, you can usually find a design problem.

#5

Norman was the Moses of product design, and he wrote the book The Design of Everyday Things in which he documented all the ways in which the fodder of everyday life failed us. He had tried to retire in the early 1990s, before Apple lured him there.

#6

The design world has expanded beyond just the design firm IDEO, which was a pioneer in marketing the movement. Today, design thinking has been used to solve countless problems at every scale.

#7

The most important assumption behind all of Norman’s work is that humans are always going to make mistakes, and that it is hard to imagine any human not making these mistakes. However, it is also hard to imagine any human not assuming their environment should work the way they expect it to.

#8

The problems that caused Three Mile Island were similar to the ones that frustrate you when you’re trying to turn off the notifications on your smartphone. The inscrutability of a poorly designed light switch shares the same cause as your