Some of the reading list in the UI/UX course at Brown:<p><a href="http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1300/" rel="nofollow">http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1300/</a><p>Particularly (free links with pdfs),<p>Don Norman - Design of Everyday Things
<a href="https://archive.org/details/DesignOfEverydayThings" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/DesignOfEverydayThings</a><p>Bill Buxton - Input Manuscript
<a href="http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html</a><p>Alan Cooper - About Face
<a href="http://feiramoderna.net/download/pos-positivo/COOPER-Alan/About_Face_3-The_Essentials_of_Interaction_Design.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://feiramoderna.net/download/pos-positivo/COOPER-Alan/Ab...</a><p>Vignelli - The Vignelli Canon
<a href="http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf</a><p>Bill Buxton - Sketching User Experiences
<a href="http://bscw.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/pub/bscw.cgi/d807887/Sketching_User_Experiences___Getting_the_Design_Right_and_the_Right_Design__Interactive_Technologies_.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://bscw.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/pub/bscw.cgi/d807887/Sk...</a><p>(the workshop slides)
<a href="https://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ss14/id/Day%202%20Sketching%20IxD.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ss14/id/Day%202%20Sketch...</a>
Joel Spolsky's "User Interface Design for Programmers" is concise, educational, entertaining... and free (even an easy-to-read all-in-one HTML page):<p><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html</a><p>Also highly recommend Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" (as others have already commented): <a href="http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html</a>
There are many books talking about UX/UI design, but most of them are quite abstract and do not tell you, when exactly, on which stage of your software development process to apply the knowledge they present. This often leads to a typical mistake done by developers, that I've seen in too many projects, when UI design is considered at later stages of the project, when they are starting coding the UI and all the backend is already done. Because of that, the process is equally important and needs some of your attention.<p>To achieve really good results in UX design, to do it at the right time, I'd recommend to start not from the books, but from the interaction design specialization on Coursera at <a href="https://en.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design" rel="nofollow">https://en.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design</a> or you can take just intro - <a href="https://en.coursera.org/learn/human-computer-interaction" rel="nofollow">https://en.coursera.org/learn/human-computer-interaction</a>. You can take the courses for free and they'll give you the necessary mindset and understanding of process. You'll find that product design actually starts from UX, not ends with it and it defines the necessary requirements framework for the system architecture, which you can use later in combination with BDD/DDD. After that course you can start reading the books (Steve Krug, Don Norman, Alan Cooper, indeed!) and platform guidelines (my favorites are for Google Material Design and Microsoft's Modern UI).<p>It will be great if someone here recommends some books or articles about UX design process and integration of it into popular agile methodologies.
"Build Better Products" [1] by Laura Klein, will be available on Nov 1st. Laura Klein was recently a guest on the Lean Startup Podcast [2]. She brings an experimental, iterative, approach to design.<p>[1] <a href="http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/build-better-products/" rel="nofollow">http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/build-better-products/</a>
[2] <a href="https://soundcloud.com/lean-startup/4-season-3-combining-user-centered-design-lean-startup-to-build-better-products?in=lean-startup/sets/lean-startup-webcasts" rel="nofollow">https://soundcloud.com/lean-startup/4-season-3-combining-use...</a>
Nielsen Norman Group has a blog archive[0] spanning over 20 years, with posts from Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini, among others. For example:<p>"10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design" by Jakob Nielsen, January 1, 1995 [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nngroup.com/articles/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/</a>
Since there are already a lot of books here..
I'd say reading some of the top voted questions on Stack Exchange's "User Experience" gives an idea of things UI designers consider relevant.<p><a href="https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes" rel="nofollow">https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes</a><p>This question may be particularly relevant:<p><a href="https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/74/the-must-read-user-interface-book" rel="nofollow">https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/74/the-must-read-user...</a>
"Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud! Simply the single most important book to understand sequentional word/picture combinations. And yes, it's a comic!<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics</a>
The original Macintosh User Interface Guidelines are still worth a read. Some of them have been forgotten. A good one is "You should never have to tell the computer something it already knows".
Here's a different perspective: the best UI is where you can get rid of most or all interaction.<p><a href="http://worrydream.com/MagicInk" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/MagicInk</a>
Alan Cooper's About Face. It's quite old - the latest ed is from 2007 - but it is still very good at introducing goal-oriented design and lots of practical design concepts.
GoodUI has a handy list of tested design patterns and recommendations:<p><a href="http://www.goodui.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.goodui.org</a>
Some great books- immerse in it for rapid learning<p>Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) - <a href="http://amzn.to/2e5Erfc" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.to/2e5Erfc</a><p>Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty - <a href="http://amzn.to/2euMOUc" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.to/2euMOUc</a><p>UX Design and Usability Mentor Book : With Best Practice Business Analysis and User Interface Design Tips and Techniques - <a href="http://amzn.to/2dXYZJT" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.to/2dXYZJT</a>
I keep re-reading The UI Audit by Jane Portman:<p><a href="http://uibreakfast.com/audit/" rel="nofollow">http://uibreakfast.com/audit/</a><p>I use it every time I need to craft an interface but especially for SaaS apps. The OP requested something from a 'newbie perspective'; this book will explain the basics but the real value comes from the explanations and advice with respect to why UI decisions lead to happier users.<p>I've copy/pasted the chapter headings from the site:<p>Introduction<p>Chapter 1. Your Product Strategy<p>Chapter 2. Navigation<p>Chapter 3. Dashboard & Homescreen<p>Chapter 4. Audit Your Screens<p>Chapter 5. The Problem of Style<p>Chapter 6. Get a Theme<p>Chapter 7. Plan for Improvements<p>Chapter 8. Deal With New Features
How has Bruce Tognazzini's stuff not been mentioned yet? Tog on Software and Tog on Interface are great.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Software-Design-Bruce-Tognazzini/dp/0201489171" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Software-Design-Bruce-Tognazzini/...</a>
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Interface-Bruce-Tognazzini/dp/0201608421" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Interface-Bruce-Tognazzini/dp/020...</a>
<a href="http://alistapart.com/" rel="nofollow">http://alistapart.com/</a> A mix of web topics, and has covered UI/UX from the earliest days.
I think it really depends on what you want to do.<p>1) Want to make user interfaces that are actually useful to people? Read up on product management, UX and interaction design. Important skills: articulating the problem you are solving and for what kind of user, and being able to validate whether your hypothesis is on point. Iterating before committing further resources to building a prototype. Conducting user testing sessions (rocket surgery made easy is a good resource for this).<p>2) Want to make a specific view / flow of a product inviting and visually appealing? Study visual design and typography.<p>3) Want to be able to build a functional prototype that looks reasonably good? Study frontend design / development. There are a lot of frameworks that could get you up and running.<p>IMHO going for (1) and (3) first is smart; if you can't prototype and evaluate a user experience that has a shot in hell of being useful to an actual user, being able to make stuff look pretty is kind of irrelevant (unless you are specializing and collaborating with engineers and UX people). In any of the above cases, at least knowing more precisely what you want to learn will help you do better googling, e.g "best books on visual design" or "best books on interaction design".
Design for Hackers is a pretty good book - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Beauty/dp/1119998956" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Be...</a><p>Meanwhile <a href="https://www.designernews.co" rel="nofollow">https://www.designernews.co</a> is Hackernews for designers
I had reading list by Kevin Hale in my notes. I think he doesn't mind if I share:
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R18EQHHM74IXPQ/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full?&tag=rnwap-20" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R18EQHH...</a>
This one is good at teaching both fundamental design principles and UI design in particular
Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques<p>This is an introduction to UX
The User Experience Team of One<p>It's from Rosenfeld Media and you should take a look at the rest of their books. They are of a high quality and cover a wide range of topics related to both UI design and UX.
Hi,
in addition to checking out if any of the suggested resources work extremely well for you, I'd like to suggest this book.<p>It answered a lot of the questions about design process I had some ten years ago. (I am now involved in UX and product design)<p><a href="http://scottberkun.com/making-things-happen/" rel="nofollow">http://scottberkun.com/making-things-happen/</a><p>If you go briefly through it, you'll certainly find some sections useful for clearing things up with information design, capturing design goals, singling out tasks etc. It sparked my own interest in user experience and service design back then.<p>To my opinion, after much thought and practice, UI design is very much a shell to everything that's preceeding it on the timeline. Try to cover UX as well as UI, capturing requirements, etc.<p>It is also important to find a book, a blog or a course that is mesmerizing particularly to you, and easy to grasp with your specific background. Good luck!
Alice
If you can read only one book read <i>About Face 2.0</i>
You can find a somewhat better about most of the topics mentioned there that go into more depth into individual topics (except maybe the core of interaction design) but About Face 2.0 will give you a solid foundation into design applied to interfaces.
Universal Principles of Design - William Lidwell<p>It's not explicitly computer UI design, but the book is essentially an alphabetical list of design concepts with illustrations/examples, and they're very applicable to computers. Amazon has "look inside" if you want to see what it's about.
Second Tufte, read all of them several times and they've influenced everything since. Raskin's "The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems" is another good one, puts a lot of solid research into context.
I follow <a href="http://sidebar.io/" rel="nofollow">http://sidebar.io/</a> for a couple of years, it's a nice place to get the latest articles about UI, UX, fonts, etc.
Shameless plug, since I recently wrote it: <a href="https://medium.com/the-craftsman/the-whoa-how-did-you-do-that-f56dc105227c#.5epmt21fo" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/the-craftsman/the-whoa-how-did-you-do-tha...</a><p>Basically, don't forget the human in human computer interaction/UI/UX. It's very easy to come out of the academic perspective on UI/UX design designing exclusively to efficiency formulas and words in a glossary. Keep the user, the human, and their context in mind.
Not a book, but if you want to improve your UI just watch as a novice user tries to use your software. You will learn in 10 minutes things it would take a book 10 hours to explain.
I found Design for Hackers helped make my work less vomit inducing, but I'd suggest that it's really mindfulness of what you're building (rather than just flinging interface at a screen) that'll get you over the first hump, and almost any book will suffice.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Beauty/dp/1119998956" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Be...</a>
Excellent intro (free): The Fable of the User-Centered Designer [1]<p>His Udemy course is also very good: User Experience (UX): The Ultimate Guide to Usability and UX [2]<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/fable/" rel="nofollow">http://www.userfocus.co.uk/fable/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.udemy.com/ultimate-guide-to-ux/" rel="nofollow">https://www.udemy.com/ultimate-guide-to-ux/</a>
This is always a great resource: <a href="https://hackdesign.org/" rel="nofollow">https://hackdesign.org/</a><p>* edit: meant this one
"Designing with the Mind in Mind" (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8564020-designing-with-the-mind-in-mind" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8564020-designing-with-t...</a>) is an excellent book that approaches design from a fundamental psychology perspective.
Here's a list of all design books that I give to new hires:<p>Branded Interactions: Creating the Digital Experience - (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Branded-Interactions-Creating-Digital-Experience/dp/0500518173" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Branded-Interactions-Creating-Digital...</a>)<p>The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/0961392142/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480332&sr=1-1&keywords=Edward+Tufte" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informati...</a><p>Universal Principles of Design - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-Revised-Updated/dp/1592535879/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480359&sr=1-1&keywords=universal+principles+of+design" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-Revised-U...</a><p>The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1976 - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Interface-Transformation-Corporate-1945-1976-Quadrant/dp/0816670390/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480388&sr=1-1&keywords=the+interface+ibm" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Interface-Transformation-Corporate-19...</a><p>Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Multiple-Signatures-Designers-Authors-Readers/dp/0847839737/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480427&sr=1-1&keywords=Multiple+Signatures" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Multiple-Signatures-Designers-Authors...</a><p>Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Change-Design-Transforms-Organizations-Innovation/dp/0061766089/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480449&sr=1-1&keywords=Change+by+design" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Change-Design-Transforms-Organization...</a><p>Thoughts on Design - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Design-Paul-Rand/dp/081187544X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480478&sr=1-1&keywords=Thoughts+on+design" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Design-Paul-Rand/dp/08118754...</a><p>Notes on the Synthesis of Form - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Synthesis-Form-Harvard-Paperbacks/dp/0674627512/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476480495&sr=1-1&keywords=notes+on+the+synthesis+of+form" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Synthesis-Form-Harvard-Paperbac...</a><p>..and a list of ones I'm considering adding:<p>Unflattening - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674744438/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674744438/ref=oh_aui_deta...</a><p>Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038534936X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038534936X/ref=oh_aui_deta...</a><p>The Design Method - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321928849/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321928849/ref=oh_aui_deta...</a><p>Product Design for the Web: Principles of Designing and Releasing Web Products- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321929039/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321929039/ref=oh_aui_deta...</a>
I've come back to this article a couple of times a year since it was written in 1994 and it still generates great insights into what my users will want from my systems:<p><a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/goal-composition" rel="nofollow">https://www.nngroup.com/articles/goal-composition</a>
Shameless self post about a repo I've made about UI resources<p><a href="https://github.com/kevindeasis/awesome-ui" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/kevindeasis/awesome-ui</a><p>I'll be adding more content in the last week of October and fixing the repo so it'll be easier to navigate
Check out Nathan Barry's book Designing Web Applications: <a href="http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/" rel="nofollow">http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/</a><p>It's accessible, not too long, and yet still packed with good info on the basics of ui design and user experience.
My favorites are the classic "The Design of Everyday Things" and "Microinteractions" (<a href="http://microinteractions.com/about-the-book/" rel="nofollow">http://microinteractions.com/about-the-book/</a>).
I found Seductive Interaction Design to be both enjoyable and highly instructive!
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321725522/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321725522/</a>
Have a look at <a href="http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week-1" rel="nofollow">http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week-1</a>. I have not read all articles of this blog but the first few give meaningful UX insight.
It's a little dated (is it sad that 2006 is "dated"?), but I still find "Designing Interfaces" by Jenifer Tidwell (it's an O'Reilly book) helpful once in a while for basic UI/interaction thoughts.
"Design for Hackers" from David Kadavy is a really great introduction to design for programmers.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119998956" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119998956</a>
the stackoverflow equivalent for ui/ux provide some common tips and can help avoid a lot of pitfall.<p><a href="http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=frequent" rel="nofollow">http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=frequent</a><p>my favorite: <a href="http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/9946/should-i-use-yes-no-or-ok-cancel-on-my-message-box" rel="nofollow">http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/9946/should-i-use-yes-...</a>
I have yet to read it, but I've seen good opinions on 'About face' in some threads on the topic<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/1118766571" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des...</a>
I still really like and would strongly recommend Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321344758" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321344758</a>)