UX book club Amsterdam

The UX book club Amsterdam is an informal group of people working in the user experience field in or around Amsterdam. Every now and then the group gets together to discuss a book on the subject of User Experience. Last Tuesday was the third edition of the Amsterdam book club, or my first. The event was kindly hosted by Hyves (I met some of my soon to be colleagues!), and since I already owned the book I decided to tag along.

We discussed Kim Goodwin’s book Designing for the Digital Age. It is a 700+ page book and almost none of us had read the book front to back. The book is extremely extensive and you can clearly see the huge amount of experience Goodwin shine through in the book.

I was quite overwhelmed by this book and found it hard to put everything in its context. Most of the other attendees agreed. The book is most likely best used as a reference book. For example, if you have a kickoff meeting, you could review the chapter on kickoff meetings in order to prepare.

We nicknamed the book the bible of user experience design. We all gave the book a grade, I think the average was around an 8 or 8.5. I can definitely recommend this book, but only if you have some experience or if you want to use it as a reference book.

It was really fun to get in-depth on this subject with so many knowledgeable people. After the book discussion, we concluded the evening with a beer in a local pub.