Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability


Steve Krug - 2000
    And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks


Luke WroblewskiMicah Alpern - 2008
    In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms.

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web


Jesse James Garrett - 2002
    This book aims to minimize the complexity of user-centered design for the Web with explanations and illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques.

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience


Jeff Gothelf - 2012
    In this insightful book, leading advocate Jeff Gothelf teaches you valuable Lean UX principles, tactics, and techniques from the ground up—how to rapidly experiment with design ideas, validate them with real users, and continually adjust your design based on what you learn.Inspired by Lean and Agile development theories, Lean UX lets you focus on the actual experience being designed, rather than deliverables. This book shows you how to collaborate closely with other members of the product team, and gather feedback early and often. You’ll learn how to drive the design in short, iterative cycles to assess what works best for the business and the user. Lean UX shows you how to make this change—for the better.Frame a vision of the problem you’re solving and focus your team on the right outcomesBring the designers’ toolkit to the rest of your product teamShare your insights with your team much earlier in the processCreate Minimum Viable Products to determine which ideas are validIncorporate the voice of the customer throughout the project cycleMake your team more productive: combine Lean UX with Agile’s Scrum frameworkUnderstand the organizational shifts necessary to integrate Lean UXLean UX received the 2013 Jolt Award from Dr. Dobb's Journal as the best book of the year. The publication's panel of judges chose five notable books, published during a 12-month period ending June 30, that every serious programmer should read.

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design


Robert Hoekman Jr. - 2002
    Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application design so the end result of every project instills customer satisfaction and loyalty. These principles include building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. Designing the Obvious does not offer a one-size-fits-all development process—in fact, it lets you use whatever process you like. Instead, it offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.

Designing for the Social Web


Joshua Porter - 2008
    With tons of examples from real-world interfaces and a touch of the underlying social psychology theory, Joshua Porter shows you how to design your next great social web application.

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People


Susan M. Weinschenk - 2011
    We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you'll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as: What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen?What makes memories stick?What is more important, peripheral or central vision?How can you predict the types of errors that people will make?What is the limit to someone's social circle?How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step?What line length for text is best?Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.

The Non-Designer's Design Book


Robin P. Williams - 2003
    Not to worry: This book is the one place you can turn to find quick, non-intimidating, excellent design help. In The Non-Designer's Design Book, 2nd Edition, best-selling author Robin Williams turns her attention to the basic principles of good design and typography. All you have to do is follow her clearly explained concepts, and you'll begin producing more sophisticated, professional, and interesting pages immediately. Humor-infused, jargon-free prose interspersed with design exercises, quizzes, illustrations, and dozens of examples make learning a snap—which is just what audiences have come to expect from this best-selling author.

Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design


William Lidwell - 2003
    Because no one can be an expert on everything, designers have always had to scramble to find the information and know-how required to make a design work - until now. Universal Principles of Design is 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. From the 80/20 rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Ockham's razor, and from self-similarity to storytelling, 100 design concepts are defined and illustrated for readers to expand their knowledge.This landmark reference will become the standard for designers, engineers, architects, and students who seek to broaden and improve their design expertise.

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Web Application


37 Signals - 2006
    At under 200 pages it's quick reading too. Makes a great airplane book.

A Project Guide to UX Design: For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making


Russ Unger - 2009
    If you are an organization that really needs to start grokking UX this book is also for you. " -- Chris Bernard, User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable Web site or application--one that's easily navigated and meets the needs of both the site owner and its users. But there's a lot more to successful UX design than knowing the latest Web technologies or design trends: It takes diplomacy, project management skills, and business savvy. That's where this book comes in. Authors Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler show you how to integrate UX principles into your project from start to finish. - Understand the various roles in UX design, identify stakeholders, and enlist their support- Obtain consensus from your team on project objectives- Define the scope of your project and avoid mission creep- Conduct user research and document your findings- Understand and communicate user behavior with personas- Design and prototype your application or site- Make your product findable with search engine optimization- Plan for development, product rollout, and ongoing quality assurance

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity


Alan Cooper - 1999
    Cooper details many of these meta functions to explain his central thesis: programmers need to seriously re-evaluate the many user-hostile concepts deeply embedded within the software development process. Rather than provide users with a straightforward set of options, programmers often pile on the bells and whistles and ignore or de-prioritise lingering bugs. For the average user, increased functionality is a great burden, adding to the recurrent chorus that plays: "computers are hard, mysterious, unwieldy things." (An average user, Cooper asserts, who doesn't think that way or who has memorised all the esoteric commands and now lords it over others, has simply been desensitised by too many years of badly designed software.) Cooper's writing style is often overblown, with a pantheon of cutesy terminology (i.e. "dancing bearware") and insider back-patting. (When presenting software to Bill Gates, he reports that Gates replied: "How did you do that?" to which he writes: "I love stumping Bill!") More seriously, he is also unable to see beyond software development's importance--a sin he accuses programmers of throughout the book. Even with that in mind, the central questions Cooper asks are too important to ignore: Are we making users happier? Are we improving the process by which they get work done? Are we making their work hours more effective? Cooper looks to programmers, business managers and what he calls "interaction designers" to question current assumptions and mindsets. Plainly, he asserts that the goal of computer usage should be "not to make anyone feel stupid." Our distance from that goal reinforces the need to rethink entrenched priorities in software planning. -- Jennifer Buckendorff, Amazon.com

Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions


Bill Scott - 2008
    Distilled from the authors' years of experience at Sabre, Yahoo!, and Netflix, these best practices are grouped into six key principles to help you take advantage of the web technologies available today. With an entire section devoted to each design principle, Designing Web Interfaces helps you:Make It Direct-Edit content in context with design patterns for In Page Editing, Drag & Drop, and Direct SelectionKeep It Lightweight-Reduce the effort required to interact with a site by using In Context Tools to leave a "light footprint"Stay on the Page-Keep visitors on a page with overlays, inlays, dynamic content, and in-page flow patternsProvide an Invitation-Help visitors discover site features with invitations that cue them to the next level of interactionUse Transitions-Learn when, why, and how to use animations, cinematic effects, and other transitionsReact Immediately-Provide a rich experience by using lively responses such as Live Search, Live Suggest, Live Previews, and more Designing Web Interfaces illustrates many patterns with examples from working websites. If you need to build or renovate a website to be truly interactive, this book gives you the principles for success.

Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services


Kim Goodwin - 2009
    Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.

Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules


Jeff Johnson - 2010
    But as the field evolves, designers enter the field from many disciplines. Practitioners today have enough experience in UI design that they have been exposed to design rules, but it is essential that they understand the psychology behind the rules in order to effectively apply them. In "Designing with the Mind in Mind," Jeff Johnson, author of the best selling "GUI Bloopers," provides designers with just enough background in perceptual and cognitive psychology that UI design guidelines make intuitive sense rather than being just a list of rules to follow. * The first practical, all-in-one source for practitioners on user interface design rules and why, when and how to apply them.* Provides just enough background into the reasoning behind interface design rules that practitioners can make informed decisions in every project.* Gives practitioners the insight they need to make educated design decisions when confronted with tradeoffs, including competing design rules, time constrictions, or limited resources.