Good books on UI/UX design?

by zbruhnke on 10/19/2010, 3:27 AM with 13 comments

Ok so the title should basically describe what I am wondering here.

A little background: I have been a hacker of some sort since the age of 12 when I taught myself C reading a few books (Im now 23). I generally retain information I read pretty well and find myself with an impressive collection of books on a multitude of programming languages, however as someone who is very technical, I often find that I have VERY little creativity.

Ultimately I would like to become better at UI/UX design, So I am looking for suggestions on some good books that could help me with my lack of creativity and give me some insight into how to PROPERLY design a UI for my user base instead of continuing to use un-original ideas or depend on other (often undependable) programmers.

  • by vitovito on 10/19/2010, 3:41 AM

    From an email I recently sent out:

    I'd suggest starting out with "The Non-Designer's Design Book," which explains the basics of putting elements on a page or screen together in a tasteful way; "The Humane Interface," which explains testing and measuring for efficiency and why dialog boxes are often bad and so on and so forth; and "Designing for Interaction," which is often cited as a good overview of the practice of interaction design, and I just flipped through it and it seems to be, although I haven't read it.

    After those three, you could probably throw a dart at this list: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=114778998560307&to...

  • by jlintz on 10/19/2010, 2:53 PM

    Check out Edward Tufte's books , from his webpage

    "Edward Tufte has written seven books, including Beautiful Evidence, Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. He writes, designs, and self-publishes his books on analytical design, which have received more than 40 awards for content and design. He is Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design. His current work includes landscape sculpture, printmaking, video and a new book."

  • by viggity on 10/19/2010, 1:05 PM

    Ben Fry's PhD work is awesome, it is easy to read and free!

    http://benfry.com/phd/

  • by on 10/19/2010, 3:37 AM

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  • by vikasvadlapatla on 10/19/2010, 5:59 AM

    Somewhat coincidently, I just wrote a blog about UX and UI resources. Check it out at http://vikasvadlapatla.posterous.com/learn-usability-in-2-we...

  • by lylejohnson on 10/19/2010, 2:34 PM

    I got a lot out of Alan Cooper's book About Face back when I was developing more desktop GUI applications. I'm not sure how relevant it would be for your purposes, given that it predates the rise in popularity of web-based applications.

  • by kingsidharth on 10/19/2010, 4:23 AM

    I'd say start with "Don't Make me Think" Designer's thoughts here.

  • by andrewtbham on 10/19/2010, 4:57 PM

    From another recent thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1768358

    Favorite UX books

    The Design of Everyday Things

    The Humane Interface

    Contextual Design

  • by ajleary on 10/19/2010, 4:40 AM

    Design the Obvious by Hoekman articulates the basic challenges of design in a very straightforward way.

  • by devmonk on 10/19/2010, 3:30 AM
  • by ashitvora on 10/20/2010, 1:30 AM
  • by bgrins on 10/19/2010, 3:37 AM

    Here is a link with a list: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-books-on-UI-UX-design...

    I've personally read "User Interface Design for Programmers" and "Don't Make Me Think", and would recommend both.