For all those of you interested in finding out more about the experience and user centered design, we’ve put together a list of books that are some good reads. They include various design topics ranging from UX/UI, interaction design, human factors, human-computer interaction, usability, and more.
| Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Steve Krug’s guide to help you understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject. | Steve Krug |
| The Design of Everyday Things – In this entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman hails excellence of design as the most important key to regaining the competitive edge in influencing consumer behavior. | Donald A. Norman |
| The Universal Principles of Design – The first cross-disciplinary reference of design. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this book pairs clear explanations of the design concepts featured with visual examples of those concepts applied in practice. | Lidwell, Holden, & Butler |
| Tog on Interface – Using ideas from such diverse sources as Information Theory, Carl Jung, and even professional beekeeping, the book provides a framework for achieving a deep understanding of user interface design. | Bruce Tognazzini |
| Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions – This books serves as an invaluable compendium of methods that can be easily referenced and utilized by cross-disciplinary teams in nearly any design project. | Hanington & Martin |
| About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design – You’ll learn the principles of good product behavior and gain an understanding of Cooper’s Goal-Directed Design method, which involves everything from conducting user research to defining your product using personas and scenarios. | Cooper, Reimann & Cronin |
| Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules – Jeff Johnson presents the first practical guide to help designers and developers understand the psychology behind these tried and tested user interface design rules. | Jeff Johnson |
| Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design – UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence. | Jenifer Tidwell |
| Microinteractions: Designing with Details – This book provides a new way of thinking about designing digital products: as a series of microinteractions that are essential to bringing personality and delight to applications and devices. | Dan Saffer |
| How to Make Sense of Any Mess – This book outlines a step-by-step process for making sense of messes made of information (and people). | Abby Covert |
| Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond – Anyone involved in digital design will learn how to create semantic structures that will help people engage with your message. | Rosenfeld, Morville & Arango |
| The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web – The author gives readers the big picture of Web user experience development, from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design. | Jesse James Garrett |
| The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology – This book challenges our world of nagging, screen-based bondage, and shows how we can build a technologically advanced world without digital interfaces. | Golden Krishna |
| Designing Interactions – In the book, Bill Moggridge introduces us to 40 influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology. | Bill Moggridge |
| Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design – The book approaches design and design thinking as something distinct that needs to be better understood-by both designers and the people with whom they need to work- in order to achieve success with new products and systems. | Bill Buxton |
| Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services – This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses project management, user research, and consensus-building problems with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. | Kim Goodwin |
| 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People – This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. | Susan M. Weinschenk |
| Usability Engineering – The book provides the tools needed to avoid usability surprises and improve product quality. Step-by-step information on which method to use at various stages during the development lifecycle are included, along with detailed information on how to run a usability test and the unique issues relating to international usability. | Jakob Nielsen |
| A Practical Guide to Information Architecture – Whether it’s organising content, providing clear descriptions or ways for people to get to them, this book is armed with practical advice and examples. | Donna Spencer |
| Mobile First – Former Yahoo! design architect and co-creator of Bagcheck Luke Wroblewski knows more about mobile experience than the rest of us, and packs all he knows into this entertaining, to-the-point guidebook. | Luke Wroblewski |
| Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers – Think First serves as a roadmap to building a solid foundation for UX that’s strong enough to withstand any weather as projects move into design and coding. | Joe Natoli |
| Designing Web Navigation – This book demonstrates that good navigation is not about technology – it’s about the ways people find information, and how you guide them. | James Kalbach |
| Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences – The author takes a fresh approach to designing sites and interactions based on the stages of seduction. This beautifully designed book examines what motivates people to act. | Stephen P. Anderson |
| The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide – The book prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. | Leah Buley |
| Design Systems Handbook – A design system unites product teams around a common visual language. It reduces design debt, accelerates the design process, and builds bridges between teams working in concert to bring products to life. Learn how you can create your design system and help your team improve product quality while reducing design debt. | Marco Suarez, Jina Anne, Katie Sylor-Miller, Diana Mounter, and Roy Stanfield |
| Defensive Design for the Web: How to Improve Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Crisis Points – This book shows the right (and wrong) ways to get defensive, offers guidelines to prevent errors and rescue customers if a breakdown occurs. | Matthew Linderman & Jason Fried |
| UX for Lean Startups – UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product to market. | Laura Klein |
| GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don’ts and DOS – The book looks at user interface design bloopers from commercial software, Web sites, Web applications, and information appliances, explaining how intelligent, well-intentioned professionals make these mistakes–and how you can avoid them. | Jeff Johnson |
| The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed. – The textbooks are assembled in a gigantic 4000+ page encyclopedia covering the design of interactive products and services such as websites, household objects, smartphones, computer software, aircraft cockpits, you name it. | Mads Soegaard & Rikke Friis Dam (eds.) |
| User Interface Design for Programmers – Author proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. | Joel Spolsky |
| A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web – Learn solid graphic design theory that you can simply apply to your designs, making the difference from a good design to a great one. Free to read online | Mark Boulton |
| Design for Hackers – By the end of this book, you’ll be able to apply the featured design principles to your own web designs, mobile apps, or other digital work. | David Kadavy |
| Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design – This is the first book on the topic of simplicity aimed specifically at interaction designers. It shows how to drill down and simplify user experiences when designing digital tools and applications. | Giles Colborne |
| Just Enough Research – Learn how to discover your competitive advantages, spot your own blind spots and biases, identify small changes with huge potential impact, and why you should never, ever hold a focus group. | Erika Hall |
| Atomic Design – This book introduces a methodology for thinking of our UIs as thoughtful hierarchies, discusses the qualities of effective pattern libraries, and showcases techniques to transform your team’s design and development workflow. Free to read online | Brad Frost |
| Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide – Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you to flesh out design ideas, test assumptions, and gather real-time feedback from users. | Todd Zaki Warfel |
| Tactical UI Design Patterns: The Handbook to Faster design – Easy to digest and practical for everyday design. Know how to choose the best UI pattern, prototype patterns, customize patterns, and create your own pattern library. | UXPin |
| Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It – This book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities. | Mike Monteiro |
| Bootstrapping Design – An eBook teaching design principles to bootstrappers, startup founders, and hackers. Learn easy design strategies to attract more users and help your business succeed. Become the designer your startup needs. | Jarrod Drysdale |