Don't Make Me Think is a classic and one I was encouraged to read when I started working way in the tech and design industry back in 2012. It was first printed even longer ago than that and some of the examples were really quite dated. It was great to see the old Amazon double tab UI we've since moved away from, and the discussion of how Amazon revolutionised design thinking by simplified search to search for anything rather than to ask the user to pick if they want to search by a category like author, title, or genre.

When I first read this I wondered, why would I want to not think? Why do I want a company / website to do my thinking for me? Can I trust them? Since I've matured (and possibly since I've had kids sap brain space) I've come round to the idea I'm fully happy to let a company do some of my thinking for me. I really don't care about the inner workings of a business and having UIs that show how the internal business logic is structured and that force me to think along the same lines as their business internals... that's something I can do without. When all I want to do is get some information, make a purchase, or raise an issue I'm happy for the business internal complexity to be withheld from me and free me up to spend more time thinking about things I do care about.