When Brian Solis published X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, it was lauded as one of the best books to capture the zeitgeist of the digital revolution while laying out a practical blueprint to lead the future of modern customer experience design and innovation.
Even today, the book still leads the way forward, especially in an era of generative AI. And as testament to its endurance relevance and value, Bookauthority just announced X as one of the “Best Customer Experience Books of All Time!”
Additionally, X was and still is recognized for its stunning design, not common, at the time, amongst business books. In fact, X and its predecessor, WTF: What’s the Future of Business – Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences, sparked a trend for business book design to earn a place both on bookshelves, lobbies, and coffee tables.
Here are a few other interesting facts you may not know about X…
Brian believed that for X to be taken seriously as a book about experience innovation that the book itself had to be an experience.
Because the book explores how digital and mobile are transforming customer expectations and as a result, customer journeys, the book was designed as an “analog app.” It doesn’t feature a traditional table of contents. It is organized by contextual themes vs linear format. And, the balance of written and visual narratives reflect experiences on your favorite apps vs. traditional books. Brian’s inspiration was to create a book that today’s high school, digital-first, students could read intuitively.
The shape of X is formed after an iPad because a smartphone was too small.
X was designed in partnership between Brian and the amazing team at Mekanism.
X was supposed to follow Brian’s second solo book with Wiley, The End of Business as Usual. Instead, the publishers felt that the gap between themes was too great. Brian wrote WTF to bridge the gap. Originally intended as an e-book only, Brian used the exercise to experiment with designing a print book as an analog app. This helped set the stage for X.
The “X” on the cover is real. It’s layers of etched glass. To give it the lighting effects, the X was placed on its back on top of a TV screen, which was illuminated to create a spectrum of colors. The video below is the result!
If you read X, please share with your networks on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, TikTok! Please use this link to it references the list. Thank you!
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