Books Being Read By Me - A Look Into My UX Library
An Enjoyable Sisyphean Endeavor
As I'm typing this, the US (and other parts of the world) are still dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic. A lot of people have been on a mission to sharpen some kind of skill (or a few), read more books, watch some enlightening content or cook more (this sentence will be great to read again in a few years and be an interesting tidbit to give future Digital Archaeologists and Historians).
Since summer of 2020, I've kept busy with a hodgepodge of various projects, attending online events, among other things (while also applying for a new job). Reading Books wasn't in that string of Covid activities only because I've been reading for years. In the sheltered environment of Covid, however, I've been reading more in small chunks of certain books every week and at least visiting most of my volumes to review overall content and skim sections.
I've heard various opinions from people about the pros and cons in relying on print for digital problems. Some pros being that good UX books can be great reference materials (more on that below), can instill larger topics and problems in context of user experience and research (philosophy, art and design, etc) and some volumes can be very helpful in handling specific UX problems or user research scenarios. One of the main con (cons?) that I heard is that, obviously, a book is either outdated or will be quickly outdated by the time people read it.
Despite this one con (I can't think of any big ones as I write this), I think it's fairly easy to supplement whatever you're reading with other online resouces. I'm subbed to quite a few UX and design newsletters and it's somewhat easy to find authors of volumes on various social media sites. With me being the avid reader, my challenge is to only keep books that will be good reference material
What I'm Reading Now
Right now, I'm reading the following books:
- Work Like a Boss by Nancy Lyons - a fantastic book on how to effectively work and collaborate with others, authored by one of my heroes, Nancy Lyons, a leader in the Twin Cities work/business sphere
- Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro - a library book I'm reading bit by bit. It's a great volume tackling more pressing problems when it comes to designing for users when working for bigger companies and Mike is another one of my heroes when calling out design culture and I'd love to someday get in touch or collaborate with him!
- Sketching User Experiences - this is one of the volumes in my weekly project "syllabus". I decided to dive into this book, and the workbook below, to sharpen my sketching skills (I think they can always use help). Bill Buxton is a long-time UX/design veteran known for his work at Microsoft, among other companies, and his information is easily digestable and logically segmented and written.
- Sketching User Experiences the Workbook - the workbook that accompanies the Sketching User Experiences book. It has a few more authors working with Buxton to help distill ideas from the OG volume into exercises (some done solo and other done with team members).
What's on My Shelf?
UX "Bibles" or Classics
General UX Design
- 101 UX Tips by William Ntim
- Measuring the User Experience by Tom Tullis and William Albert
- Patterns for Effective Use Cases by Adolf, Bramble, Cockburn, and Pols
- Design of Sites by Van Duyne, Landay, and Hong
- About Face by Alan Cooper
- Designing with Data by King, Churchill and Tan
- Solving Product Design Exercises Questions and Answers by Artiom Dashinsky
- Designing for People by Lee, Wickens, Liu, Boyle
- Designing for Behavioral Change by Stephen Wendel
- Designing the User Interface (textbook) by Schneiderman and Plaisant
- Designing Web Usability by Jakob Neilsen
- Evil by Design by Chris Nodder
- Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
User Observance/Research
- A Practical Guide to Usability Testing by Dumas and Redish
- The Moderator's Survival Guide by Tedesco and Tranquada
- Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky
- Handbook of Usability Testing by Jeffery Rubin and Dana Chisnell
- Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal
Communication and Managing Projects
- Agile Experience Design by Lindsay Ratcliffe and Marc McNeill
- A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
- Communicating Design by Dan M Brown
Coding/Type
- HTML/CSS by John Duckett
- Javascript & JQuery by John Duckett - I don't do a tond of coding, but I'm a visual learner/person and love how John explains code and their functions in these books
- The Designer's Dictionary of Type by Sean Adams
Philosophy and Ideas
I recommend any of these books...but you don't have to take my word for it...
