Purposely Irregular: Zen, Punk Rock and Ruthlessness in Experience Design

by Andrew Heaton

Purposely Irregular is a book of thoughts on experience design. It's an idea book, full of inspired thoughts on how to take your skills and talents to a higher level. It's a book of zen, celebrating the beauty and imperfections of design and the designer. It's a practical book, dealing with team and client relationships, and the evolution of the discipline. Like the best punk rock songs, it's short, quick and states "Let's get on with it!"

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Hi, I’m Andrew. I’ve been designing for digital experiences since 1993.

In that time, I’ve worked on all manner of project and product, large and tiny, simple and complex, successful and not.

In the 20 or so years I’ve been doing this, I’ve worked for companies such as Brilliant Chemistry, Doner Advertising, Versata, Trilogy, Organic and Rare Medium.

I’ve led multiple engagements for clients such as Mazda, Pennzoil, Chrysler, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Dominos Pizza, Slinky, CarFax, eBay and Blue Cross.

I live in Clawson, Michigan, you sshould stop by, I’ll probably be spinning vinyl, and working on my next books (on mobile design and designing for Automotive).

I’m on Twitter (@tigerstripe), and always love to hear from new people.

Be Good.

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent book. A bit too lax in tone. Sometimes it seemed very direct and poignant. Other times, too pithy and vague. My Information Architect friend seemed to delight in it; this would make sense since expertise relies on a level of intuition, so that the context they would share as UX pros may make the statements be more sensical. Could use more photographs, more summaries and examples of the sucky shit he mentions. I liked reading it, but figured I would need to re-read, and extract greater "action points." This sucks, since I would think the book itself would make this easier to do. As in, the table of contents would make this clear, the chapter headings would summarize points, then there would be clearly detailed statements. He jumps around a lot, so it feels like an experiment in his mind. It feels like this book is a draft for another. Good, but could have been better. I will be curious to see where he goes next.

[Ale Muñoz]

Not too earth-shattering.

A collection of truisms without too many explanations, written in a very uninspiring way. Contains some interesting ideas, but you probably arrived to the same conclusions already.

Save your money for beers with UX friends.