No joke. This is the best book related to design strategy I've ever read.
As a content strategist and taxonomy consultant, I've worked with UX and IA folks since the dawn of the Web and, while we're all aiming for usability and ease, sometimes the metaphors just aren't there.
Trying to read books on usability has been... laughable. Filled with jargon, outdated before they're printed and more useful in curing insomnia than usability issues.
Obviously, Make It So is not that book.
First, by using sci-fi, it establishes a common metaphor that makes talking about interaction tangible, real and understandable - rather than an ethereal or theoretical thing to guess at. Whether someone's read the book or not, it helped me talk about big concepts through simple examples in Star Trek, for example.
Secondly, it's a fun read, which is rare in business books, no matter how useful. I found myself wanting to read it, sneaking a chapter in whenever possible and making notes about principles I wanted to put in place, as well as a few movies I wanted to see.
Thirdly, it's immensely powerful.
I saw William Gibson speak about sci-fi storytelling once. A screenwriting student asked him how he was able to envision the future of computing so well in Neuromancer. He said (roughly) that he was glad that he hadn't seen or used a computer before he wrote it and that the first time he actually used one, he was sorely let down - that experience with computers would have prevented him from, well, inventing cyberspace.
That insight and that magic is exactly what's captured in Make it So. Through the lens of on-screen sci-fi (movies and TV), the authors take the public's hopes and fears for technology, the Platonic ideal of interaction and turn it into simple, relevant, useful, jargon-free imperatives that can apply directly (or in the case of brain-based interfaces, more indirectly) to the most basic interface choices, universal across web design, product design and, I would imagine, the future of fiction as well.
