Cadence & Slang

The Quintessential Primer to Interaction Design

Cadence & Slang is the book I wish I read before I started studying computer science in college. It’s a book I wish I had when I first fell in love with the world of design and wanted to leverage my technical background in some way. It’s a book I wish someone gave me when I first started exploring the field of interaction design. Nick Disabato’s Cadence & Slang is one of the most important books I’ve read this year—it’s the quintessential primer to interaction design for anyone who delights in making things for people.

The handbook’s refreshingly humble attempt at defining interaction design and mapping its core principles is to the nascent field what Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things is to product design and what Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think is to web usability. The very nature of interaction design, which sits squarely at the intersection of design and engineering, is encapsulated in Disabato’s well articulated grasp of product thinking as it relates to systems, and his ability to distill abstract concepts about what makes good products tick while offering applicable insights on making friendly, humane interfaces without venturing into the pedantic.

Cadence & Slang takes its name from Disabato’s characterization of interaction design—the process with which we translate technology’s internal slang into the rhythmic cadence with which we conduct our work, or put simply, it’s the art and craft of making things easier to use. The layout of the book is as functional as it is elegant in its simplicity: the two-column grid makes room for a sidebar that reveals illustrations as well as footnotes that provide external sources which explore the respective topics in depth, most of which you’ll want to reference as you build upon the design guidelines Disabato outlines in the book.

Few introductory texts have managed to capture the essence of its field so engrossingly, with such rigorous succinctness and clarity that engage and stimulate the minds of designers and non-designers alike. Cadence & Slangis a phenomenal starting point if you’ve ever wondered, at a systemic level, how designing better products can help make us better humans, and a required reading if you have any part in creating products that people use to improve their lives.