UX book recommendation

Posted on by Jag

A resource for the study of humans and design:

The usability bibles

These are the basic texts which are either well known, have been around for a long time or are historically significant in the formation of our craft.

Next, two books that go nicely together — one from the view of design psychology and one from the view of methods for testing and researching design. Both quite high level overviews, but a brilliant way to scan a complex field and decide where you want to navigate to next.

HCI and human factors

This is where all the UX stuff came from that you are doing today. If you haven’t had a formal HCI education, it is well worth understanding some of this stuff because a) you need to be able to explain your design work (rationale, human psychology, hypotheses) and b) you might come up against someone who has studied this stuff and no one likes feeling like an idiot.

However, warning: this stuff is complex, so expect to use brain.

I had a boss once, who told me “you don’t need to read that HCI stuff”. He wasn’t a very good UX Designer. ‘nuff said.

If you’re a real geek, try going back before HCI into HIP — it will blow your mind:

Design psychology

You really need to understand design psychology if you intend to either design things that work for users, or explain your work to clients and stakeholders. Here are some brilliant primers on design psychology without having to delve too far into Cognitive neuroscience.

Let’s start with Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. as she is the current god(ess) of design psychology for UX and digital design:

I bought everyone on my team a copy of that one. It’s that good.

(also check out her podcast.)

These next ones are great if you’re trying to understand user mindsets around different tasks; basically applying cognitive psychology (how we perceive things) to interface design problems. As with all UX books, the minute you put an interface in a book a becomes outdated but you can still use them to understand the principles and apply them to contemporary design.

This one is great for anyone designing eLearning platforms for example:

And if all of this is too much for you, then start here:

  • A Pocket Guide to Psychology for Designers by Joe Leech, Owen Gregory & Dave Ellender

Information Architecture

I don’t need to tell you how much I love IA or how important it is to the craft of user experience. (But I already did, so you can read that too. You’re welcome).

Here are some simply brilliant books on IA. The first is “the polar bear book” and should be the one everyone has read.

This one is great if you are leaning more into CX than UX and need to architect cross-channel experiences:

Abby’s book is the most accessible to any “on the job” UXers who just need to get a grasp of the principles asap.

And this one is just a total geek-out about the parallels between information architecture and, well, architecture. What’s not to love.

And if anyone is particularly interested in information foraging (and why wouldn’t you be!

Information Design

Much like IA, my opinions on this skill set are known — being able to handle complex information and produce clearly designed outputs will make you awesome as a UXer. Much much harder to learn from books though.

These two are brilliant and fascinating, especially around this history of humans trying to communicate complex information. Once you’ve read these however, I recommend checking out something as basic as Pinterest (search: data visualisation or customer journey map) to see how well or poorly others have executed their information design challenges.

Then go back over your own UX deliverables and see where you could have improved them.

Accessibility

This is an absolutely crucial area of our craft, but to be honest you are much better off trying to get your head around WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 rather than reading books.

However, if you need a primer on something super basic like colour contrasts, then this might be for you:

  • A Pocket Guide to Colour Accessibility by Geri Coady, Owen Gregory & Nathan Ford
  • Smashing mag also do a (well, smashing) book on inclusive design which is a lot more front end dev focused.

New addition because frankly it’s the best thing I’ve seen on Digital Inclusion in a long time and covers design, code, research, tech, strategy and implementation:

UX Design

In this section I’ve tried to focus in on books that essentially help you create better wireframes, prototypes and screens at an interaction level. There is a totally valid argument that this entire list is “UX Design” and I’m not going to fight you on that — just go read a book and calm down.

Again, bear in mind with all of these that the screen and design examples used are going to be out of date. They were out of date the day after they went to print. Simply understanding the design principles and human interaction psychology is your aim, and then applying it to whatever contemporary design problem you are facing into.

I’m also a huge fan of books that force your brain to think and your hand to draw (yes with pen!):

Voice design and chatbots

This is a fascinating area, mostly because voice design recycles a large amount of HCI information that is already “known” and re-applies it to contemporary experience design. You could go back and read papers on how the principles of HCI and cognitive psychology were applied to early voice apps and IVRs, and work it out for yourself, or you could grab one of these excellent books.

UX Strategy

Interestingly there aren’t too many books specifically about UX strategy, or at least not ones that I’d recommend. Therefore I’d focus more on designing methodologies and dealing with stakeholders for this section.

Selling what we do

And everyone has to do at least a little bit of “no really, we need to do research”

UX Research

Talking of research, there are some great books out there. Of course, in becoming a specialised user researcher nothing replaces a great teacher and a very large amount of practical experience however, I’d still propose the following for different learning scenarios.

For designers, dealing with research for the first time:

For those learning how to do usability testing or user interviews:

For those planning research, especially internationally:

For those doing ethno:

For those analysing research:

For those who were forced into doing eye tracking:

Deliverables

If you want to learn about a typical UX project outline and the various deliverables you might need to create — these are all useful. They also have guidance and examples of how to do the work, create the artifacts and communicate them. It’s worth reading all three and forming your own best approach though.

Not specifically UX, but will make you better at it.

The following books are not specifically about UX but lean into wider areas of interest and context which will support conversations, project planning and design decisions.

Technology and how we use it

You need to understand the impact of evolving technologies, because each one has an impact on human behaviour — what you’ll find in testing and how you need to design.

Much like the interface design books above, a lot of these can get dated really quickly however, as they reference and examine a range of academic studies and resources, I think you’ll find them invaluable, particularly around things like trust and digital healthcare, social networks and group psychology etc.

General Psychology

Getting towards the end of the longest list of UX books known to man, let’s take it up a level and look at general or wider human psychology and the kinds of books that can give us context into why we need to be involved in the design process at all.

This is around things like emotion, language, colour, perception and the lies we tell ourselves, and our researchers.

(Well we have to have at least one Dummies book in here 🙂

Game design

Some of us are lucky enough to get asked to design games, or interfaces with game theory elements involved. Apart from the wealth of academic knowledge available on Google Scholar, I’ve also found these two very very useful:

Data

It’s not that often that one gets elbow deep in data, but if you are that lucky — or if you just get to talk to amazing data people and want to feel less like a total imposter, here are a couple of great data books.

If you really have to get your head round stats:

Marketing and manipulation

I’m not saying you should be manipulating your users, but there is a way to do it — through design, copy and a number of other techniques. It’s worth knowing this stuff just so you can stop it. Think of it as “defence against the dark arts”. Expecto Patronum.

The pop psychology books are very accessible (though personally I’d rather read the academic papers as well because.. drool.)

If you want to get into the heavier stuff here:

Manipulation through design

Just repeating the Susan Weinschenk books here again, because they are both design psychology and (literally) how to get people to do stuff. Apply with care.

And of course dark patterns. Let’s not, eh?

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