Here are 100 books that How to Make Sense of Any Mess fans have personally recommended if you like
How to Make Sense of Any Mess.
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After a career that took me from designer to design professor, I’ve spent the past decade leading user research practices for growing product organizations. I’m excited about user research because it positions us closer to the people we design for, and challenges us to capture and explain complex scenarios in service to them. Though there are many books that teach user research, my list of recommendations is meant to demonstrate why we research, how we make sense of what we learn, and where research might take us.
The Field Study Handbook is both a guide to international field research and a beautiful work of art. Jan Chipchase comprehensively covers every possible consideration for the planning and execution of global field research, including such topics as travel logistics, lodging guidance, division of labor, and working with local guides. Jan’s deep experience from the front lines of field research comes across on every beautifully illustrated page.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
After a career that took me from designer to design professor, I’ve spent the past decade leading user research practices for growing product organizations. I’m excited about user research because it positions us closer to the people we design for, and challenges us to capture and explain complex scenarios in service to them. Though there are many books that teach user research, my list of recommendations is meant to demonstrate why we research, how we make sense of what we learn, and where research might take us.
In Just Enough Research, Erika Hall masterfully explains the value of user research and how to do it both practically and effectively. I love this book for many reasons, primarily because it’s a timeless and accessible introduction to user research concepts. I also lean on Just Enough Research when my own words fail me and I need a concise and compelling argument for including research in a product or design effort.
Design research is a hard slog that takes years to learn and time away from the real work of design, right? Wrong. Good research is about asking more and better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. It’s something every member of your team can and should do, and which everyone can learn, quickly. And done well, it will save you time and money by reducing unknowns and creating a solid foundation to build the right thing, in the most effective way. In Just Enough Research, co-founder of Mule Design Erika Hall distills her experience into a brief cookbook of…
After a career that took me from designer to design professor, I’ve spent the past decade leading user research practices for growing product organizations. I’m excited about user research because it positions us closer to the people we design for, and challenges us to capture and explain complex scenarios in service to them. Though there are many books that teach user research, my list of recommendations is meant to demonstrate why we research, how we make sense of what we learn, and where research might take us.
Listening to users is essential to product design and development, full stop. Interviews allow us to understand who uses our products and the contexts our products fit into, and Steve Portigal demonstrates how to do it like a pro in Interviewing Users. Steve breaks down every angle of the interview process, from planning to conducting to documentation. (I particularly love Steve’s approach to the interview field guide in chapter 3!)
Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. You'll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.
Separating the true stories from the myths, The Duty of Memory provides a deeper understanding of the diverse motivations that drove ordinary people to join an underground network of French Resistants despite terrible odds and horrifying consequences.
This book takes the reader inside the true story of men and women…
After a career that took me from designer to design professor, I’ve spent the past decade leading user research practices for growing product organizations. I’m excited about user research because it positions us closer to the people we design for, and challenges us to capture and explain complex scenarios in service to them. Though there are many books that teach user research, my list of recommendations is meant to demonstrate why we research, how we make sense of what we learn, and where research might take us.
Authors Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen run consulting company ReD, where they put anthropologists, sociologists, economists, journalists, and designers together to deeply understand humans in service of their clients. In The Moment of Clarity, the authors share their methods and approach via rich case studies, including their impactful work supporting LEGO in better aligning its products to its customers.
Businesses need a new type of problem solving. Why? Because they are getting people wrong. Traditional problem-solving methods taught in business schools serve us well for some of the everyday challenges of business, but they tend to be ineffective with problems involving a high degree of uncertainty. Why? Because, more often than not, these tools are based on a flawed model of human behavior. And that flawed model is the invisible scaffolding that supports our surveys, our focus groups, our R&D, and much of our long-term strategic planning. In The Moment of Clarity, Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen examine the…
I am an information architect, writer, and community organizer on a mission to make information architecture education accessible to everybody. I started practicing IA in pure pursuit of stronger visual design, but in the two decades since have developed an insatiable appetite for understanding and teaching the practical skills that make people better sensemakers, regardless of their role or medium. The books I chose for this list are all foundational to me becoming the sensemaker that I am today. I offer them as suggestions because they are not the books you will find should you search for “Information Architecture” yet they have all become my go-to recommendations for helping others to strengthen their own sensemaking.
Living in Information by Jorge Arango introduces information-soaked individuals to an easy-to-grasp architectural vocabulary that describes the patterns and shifts of context in the digital (and increasingly the digitally-enhanced-physical) world.
I recommend this book as a map of the territory when it comes to designing with or for digital systems and experiences. Jorge is a wonderful storyteller as well as a crystal clear communicator and this book is a jewel on my sensemaking bookshelf.
Jorge is also one of my favorite authors to keep up with regarding information architecture. His podcast and blog are worth a follow should the subject of his book perk your interest.
Websites and apps are places where critical parts of our lives happen. We shop, bank, learn, gossip, and select our leaders there. But many of these places weren’t intended to support these activities. Instead, they're designed to capture your attention and sell it to the highest bidder. Living in Information draws upon architecture as a way to design information environments that serve our humanity.
Excluding every day since my birth, my Gen X studies started in earnest in 2016, when Fortune 100 companies aggressively laid off my Gen X peers across the board. I was an early entrepreneur in the crypto industry and saw firsthand how people in remote reaches of the world used Bitcoin to pull themselves out of poverty. Since 2021, I have been a podcast host, interviewing founders and entrepreneurs about the benefits of technology and how to bring the next billion people across the digital divide. Most of my nearly 600 podcasts discuss how to empower people, especially my age, to live better lives by embracing the new digital economy.
It is through Brené Brown’s words in this book that I began to make sense of my journey, which is marked by loss, resilience, and an unwavering search for belonging. As I navigated the often-turbulent waters of corporate life, I wrestled with a deep-seated issue, a trait so common among my fellow Gen Xers: the struggle with authority. Through this book, it is evident that attempting to fit in, to mold myself into the expectations of others, often leads me to more heartache than success.
My path has been riddled with tremendous trials designed to dampen my spirit. Yet, through them, I have found strength. I appreciate the depth of resilience that Brené Brown speaks about. In this digital age, I often reflect on my past before the existence of social media, the simplicity of outdoor moments when I was young, and face-to-face conversations that now seem increasingly rare. I…
In hardback for the first time, this tenth-anniversary edition of the game-changing #1 New York Times bestseller features a new foreword and brand-new tools to make the work your own.
For over a decade, Brene Brown has found a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and a fellow traveller. She is both a social scientist and a kitchen-table friend whom you can always count on to tell the truth, make you laugh and, on occasion, cry with you. And what's now become a movement all started with The Gifts of Imperfection, which has sold more than two…
What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?
The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…
I am an information architect, writer, and community organizer on a mission to make information architecture education accessible to everybody. I started practicing IA in pure pursuit of stronger visual design, but in the two decades since have developed an insatiable appetite for understanding and teaching the practical skills that make people better sensemakers, regardless of their role or medium. The books I chose for this list are all foundational to me becoming the sensemaker that I am today. I offer them as suggestions because they are not the books you will find should you search for “Information Architecture” yet they have all become my go-to recommendations for helping others to strengthen their own sensemaking.
You might not think of excitement when you hear the words “Digital Governance” but I can assure you that this book is a real page-turner…especially if your job involves managing large-scale information messes. There is a special kind of chaos that only information and knowledge workers can understand and this book paints a picture so many of us have seen in practice but in a way that leaves the reader inspired to fight another day, instead of wallowing in a sea of information-induced self-pity.
I recommend this book because I have seen too many information architecture efforts die on the vine due to a lack of good governance. The frameworks and recommendations in this book mean I always have a playbook to hand to teams in need.
Few organizations realize a return on their digital investment. They’re distracted by political infighting and technology-first solutions. To reach the next level, organizations must realign their assets—people, content, and technology—by practicing the discipline of digital governance. Managing Chaos inspires new and necessary conversations about digital governance and its transformative power to support creativity, real collaboration, digital quality, and online growth.
I have been designing user interfaces since graduate school at Stanford, where I studied psychology and computer science. Over the five decades since then, I have designed many digital products and services, learning a lot about how to make them usable and useful. Two decades ago, I turned more towards sharing my knowledge and experience through writing (articles and books) and teaching (professionals and students). I’ve taught at Stanford University, Mills College, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), the University of San Francisco, and at professional conferences and companies. Google invited me twice to speak in their Authors @ Google series, and ACM and SIGCHI have given me several awards.
This book is the software industry’s “bible” on how to start software development projects.
It explains how to conduct up-front user research, before design, prototyping, and coding start. User research, followed by analysis of your findings, is how you determine requirements and figure out what features or improvements are needed and which are most important.
This book presents a collection of methods for doing that. You probably won’t need every method described this book on every project, but having Holtzblatt and Beyer’s toolkit of user-research and analysis methods available when needed is valuable.
I read it several times, and now several of its methods are baked into my normal design process.
Contextual Design: Design for Life, Second Edition, describes the core techniques needed to deliberately produce a compelling user experience. Contextual design was first invented in 1988 to drive a deep understanding of the user into the design process. It has been used in a wide variety of industries and taught in universities all over the world. Until now, the basic CD approach has needed little revision, but with the wide adoption of handheld devices, especially smartphones, the way technology is integrated into people's lives has fundamentally changed. Contextual Design V2.0 introduces both the classic CD techniques and the new techniques…
Growing up in Zambia and then South Africa, I was immersed in the natural landscapes and the fantastic variety of African plants and wildlife. However, I increasingly became aware of many other human injustices happening around me—e.g., human to human: the extreme racism of white supremacy (apartheid). Additionally, human to other animals: the ivory and wildlife ‘trade,’ resulting in what has been called The Sixth Extinction (of plants and other animals.) Alongside this destruction of life is the critical climate crisis and the financial appropriation of vital resources for profit—none more vital than water, for water is life. These books emphasise the ethical sanctity of all living beings!
The title says it all: It does not have to be this way—we can build a better, more just and kinder world together, if…we learn to act on our dreams/visions in order to make this happen. But this path—as Capetonian author Alistair Mackay outlines, in a passionate and riveting exploration of fraught existences in an increasingly divided and desertified Southern Africa—will always come at personal cost. What price are we willing to pay for a better and more inclusive human future? What artificial ways of seeing (and consuming) do we need to resist to see and value each other as we all truly are? I loved this book as it is both darkly funny and tragic, yet never loses hope for a new and better world.
Spanning from present day until the near future, this novel tells the story of three men facing the rapid unravelling of their world, due to cataclysmic climate collapse. Luthando’s environmental activism leads to a clash with the government. His life partner, Viwe, becomes embroiled in religious end-of-days fanaticism. And their friend Malcolm worries that his work in biotech augmentation will be used for sinister purposes. A story about resilience and our capacity for love in the face of fear.
Pioneer Paddles of the Colonial South
by
William D. Auman,
Award-winning novelist William Auman, author of If Trees Could Testify..., takes the reader on a time-traveling odyssey featuring 345 bodies of water in six states within the historical context through which they unfold.
Journey into remaining Colonial-era wilderness with stories of pirate treasure, epic frontiersmen, Indigenous Peoples, and Revolutionary…
Because sometimes I think they go further than the formulas set by traditional publishing. I love fantasy and similar genres because there are no limits for the imagination. The books I’ve chosen fulfill what I think is important – world-building, imagination, thought-provoking, intelligent, and wonderful characters on a mission of some kind.
Seth Rain has a knack for building believable worlds, then inserting brain-teasers to make you wonder if this could happen. The writing is fast-paced and hooks you from the start. This particular series made me wonder what is real and what is not: who really is in charge? I’m sure that people who like to think, will love this series.
In a near dystopian future, Artificial Intelligence uncovers the clockwork nature of the universe, capable of revealing the date each person will die.
But when Scott Beck is told his given date of 22nd April is wrong, he sets off on a journey that explores the true nature of free will, morality, and sacrifice.
Combining dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and cyberpunk fiction, The Warm Machine is the first novel in the haunting five-part Humanity Series, depicting a future in which humanity is on the brink of annihilation.
