There are hundreds of great books on UX, usability, interaction design and the alike. So many in fact, that it’s hard to narrow down the very best ones and know where to begin.
Gaining knowledge on UX through reading books, is one of the best places to start for UX newbies.We’ve complied this list of 12 UX books for beginners as a starting position.Have other suggestions? Tweet us @userpeekcom or leave a comment with your recommendation.
Best UX Books for Beginners
1. UX for Beginners: A Crash Course in 100 Short Lessons by Joel Marsh
For a “crash course” on UX, this is the place to start. Joel Marsh breaks down UX into one-hundred, easily digestible illustrated lessons, providing the most novice “uxer” an insight to the world of UX. Perfect read for non-designers who want to become designers, managers who teach UX, marketers, programmers etc.
You’ll learn:
The fundamentals of UX
How to plan and create wireframes
The process and science of making anything user-friendly
Find out what a UX designer does all day
Be warned, this book does contain profanity…on most pages.
After reading Don Norman’s, The Design of Everyday Things, you’ll never look at objects the same way. You will question everything – from doors to coffee machines, to the computer programs. Don manages to change the way you experience and interact with your physical surroundings. You’ll see the word with new eyes and question how things should be designed – from the perversity of bad design and the desirability of good design.
Expanding on “The Design Of Everyday Things“, Don Norman explores the reasons behind why we love or hate everyday things (objects). With a scientific backing, Norman draws on a wealth of examples to present a bold exploration of the objects in our everyday world.
Things that are more pleasurable to use, are easier to use than something with the same basic design. When people are enjoying what they are using, they tend to take more creative views at the problem they encounter during the interaction.
Build a working knowledge on:
Visceral, behavioural and reflective levels of attitudes (based on the classical ABC model of attitudes).
As it says on the homepage: A common sense approach to web and mobile usability. With an entertaining writing style, Steve presents web usability with such wit, you’ll find it hard to put the book down.
What makes this book popular for beginners is that Steve provides more detail about function, rather than form i.e. how you can improve the usability of your designs, leading to improved user experience. Krug provides several examples, demonstrating how making usability tweaks can enhance the effectiveness of your/a website. Likewise, Krug provides examples of real-world web design scenarios and offers exercises for you to follow in order to examine a website’s usability.
Known as the “companion to Don’t Make Me Think”, Steve Krug’s Rocket Surgery Made Easy spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own website, application or product.
You’ll learn how to:
Test any design – from a sketch on a napkin to a fully functioning website
Keep your focus on finding the most important problem (no one has time to fix them all)
Fix the problems that you find, using Steve’s “The least you can do” approach
Krug’s ability to demonstrate pairing testing and fixing products down to its essentials, conveys how realistic it is for teams to test early and often – catching problems while it’s still easy to fix them.
6. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design: 3rd Edition by Alan Cooper, Robert Reinman and David Cronin
Written for the mobile age, About Face stresses the need to design for mobile (and tablet) first, over desktop. In a mobile first world, we need to optimise our designs to provide the best user experience possible.
Cooper provides useful resources and methods to be used on any user interface design project. Likewise, Cooper explores the principles of good product behaviour, his goal-direct design method and how to conduct user research, define your product using personas and scenarios.
Gain knowledge on various aspects of interaction design, including:
7. The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
With clear explanations and vivid illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques, Garret cuts through the complexity of user-centered design for the web. The Elements of User Experience gives readers the big picture of web user experience development – from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design.
The five elements you’ll cover in this book, are:
Strategy: Reason to the product, application or site. Why we create, who we create for, why people are willing to use it, why they need it. Define the user needs and business objectives.
Scope: Define the functional and content requirements. What functions/features are required in the application and what content is needed. Requirements should be aligned with strategic goals.
Structure: How users interact with the product and how they product behaves with user interactions. Split into two components: interaction design and information architecture.
Skeleton: The visual form on the screen, including the arrangement of elements – usually presented through wireframes. Skeleton is split into three components: interface design, navigation design & information design.
Surface: How the product will look – colours, typography, layout etc. Things should be easy to understand, increase cognitive ability to absorb what users see on the screen.
8. Design with Intent: Insights, Methods and Patterns for Behaviour Design by Dan Lockton
Originally published as a toolkit, Design with Intent offers a more nuanced approach to behavioural design, based around designing and researching with people rather than “for” them. Drawing on academic research and practical examples, Lockton offers interaction designers, user researchers and other professionals with a new set of tools for working with human behaviour as part of the design process.
You’ll learn:
Multiple perspectives on human behaviour from different disciplines, with practical examples
Understand and apply methods of doing research with people, in context, as an integral part of the design process
Learn a more nuanced and reflective approach to “behavioural design”, questioning how problems are framed and the societal impacts of design
See how designing with people in behaviour change can be applied to social and environmental problems, as well as commercially
9. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analysing and Presenting Usability Metrics by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert
As more UX and web professionals need to justify their design decisions with solid, reliable data, Measuring the User Experience provides readers with the analysis training to easily quantify the user experience.
Tom and Bill’s 2nd edition explores new metrics such as emotional engagement, personas, keystroke analysis and NPS (net promoter score). It also examines how new technologies can refine user experience measurement, helping usability and user experience.
Learn:
Which metrics to select for every case, including behavioural, physiological, emotional, aesthetic, gestural, verbal and physical
Discover a vendor-neutral examination of how to measure the user experience with web sites, digital products and virtually any other type of product of system
10. Smashing UX Design: Foundations for Designing Online User Experiences by Jesmond Allen and James Chudley
More of a manual than a book, Smashing UX Design is great for those who want to read something start to end or simply pick up when you need topic related advice. Allen and Chudley provide an overview of UX and user centered design and examine in detail sixteen of the most common UX design research tools and techniques for your web projects.
You’ll be provided with:
Guides for when and how to use UX research and design techniques – including, usability testing, prototyping, wire framing, sketching
How to plan UX projects to suit budgets, time constraints and business objectives
Checklists to help choose the right UX tools and techniques for the job in hand
Smashing UX Design is the complete UX reference manual.
11. A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler provide a canonical resource to young UX designers and organisations, by showing how to integrate UX principle into your project, from start to finish.
User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable web site or application. Unger and Chandler bridge the gap between knowing the latest web technologies and diplomacy, project management skills and business savvy.
You’ll develop:
Understanding into the various roles on 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
12. 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People by Susan M. Weinschenik, Ph.D.
When designing a website, we try to elicit responses from people – we want them to but something, read more, or take action of some kind. Weinschenk provides real science and research with practical examples to deliver methods to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications and products – pairing up how people think, work and play.
Learn to:
Increase effectiveness, conversion rates and usability of your own design projects
Understand how people see, read, remember, think and how to focus their attention
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