Designer’s Toolkit

When I wrote the book, the original idea was to split into two halves: the first would be commentary, and the second would be more like a textbook to help people technically figure out how to implement the solution.

At the time the book was published, everyone was holding up the new concept of smartphone apps as a miracle, but this book aimed the change the course of the conversation, to open people's eyes about the coming addictions and twisted business models. And then show them a new philosophy called NoUI that could plot a new course.

Which, looking back in the many years since it was first published, I think it did rather successfully, and we've seen the WSJ essays, the Netflix documentaries and TED talks coming out years after the book that were inspired by or quoted this book as the original declaration that we are drowning in screens. That has been so powerful and incredible to see.

But I think what a lot of people didn't realize is there was planned to be this second half of the book. I spent a ton of time dissecting widely available technology that could enable screenless solutions, and made inventories of problems from major industries like healthcare and the financial world, and started pairing the problems and the tech together to create a recipe book for people to make screenless experiences that elevated technology.  

Well, it never made it in. The publisher felt that first half was so powerful on its own, so we never published this more dry textbook-like second half of the The Best Interface is No Interface.

But, I have good news. What we did, with the publisher's permission, was to bundle a bunch of that information that we never got to publish, reformat it into 8.5x11 letter sheets, and then upload a PDF to the website so anyone, anywhere could download it for free.

A few years after the book was first published some students at a college in Boston downloaded the kit and ended up winning a hackathon using solutions in it. I'm not sure how it will inspire people out there, but I'm excited that we can unleash some of that unpublished text to the world, and although it's unpolished and brief, and not as fun as the book itself, I hope it inspires you to build something amazing.