Core77

Years ago we came across a book called Why Smart People Do Stupid Things, a wonderful series of insights on how and why intelligent people can make critical mistakes. We'd always wished there was a product design equivalent of this book, and those wishes have now been answered with Sketching User Experience, written by Bill Buxton, MS researcher and a former scientist at Alias Wavefront.

Hardly a day goes by that we don't see an announcement for some new product or technology that is going to make our lives easier, solve some or all of our problems, or simply make the world a better place.... Few of these products survive, much less deliver on their typically over-hyped promise.

Although at first glance the book appears to focus on software, there are absolutely some lessons any industrial designer will find relevant, from a discussion of Apple's failures to the need to integrate design earlier in a product's genesis due to shifting technologies. Check out Businessweek's excellent review of the book here.