Here are 28 books that Interaction Design fans have personally recommended if you like
Interaction Design.
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The art of computer programming is a lot like the art of writing: It's not just about what your program says but about how it says it. One of the reasons I like the C and C++ languagesâwhich I picked up in the late 1990s and haven't put down sinceâis that, as compiled, non-sandboxed languages, they promise total control over the machine. Show me where you want each byte of data to go in memory; show me the machine instructions you want; and I can make C++ do that for you.Â
This book greatly influenced my philosophy around style. Norman's ostensible subject is the design of physical objects, like emergency exits, shower faucets, and refrigerators, but most of what he says is directly applicable to software design and API design, too.
For example: Whatever you expose or document about your interface, the user will take that and form a mental model of the implementationâand he'll program against that mental model, not against your documentation. So you'd better make sure that your interfaceâby exposing certain details and deemphasizing others, appropriate naming, and so onâsuggests a mental model that will be useful to the user (even if it is not correct in every particular).
For example, a horizontal rod mounted on a door affords pushing (a bit of jargon that's entered my technical vocabulary), while a vertical rod affords pulling. If you use the design language of a horizontal rod, people willâŠ
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious,even liberating,book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. TheâŠ
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runâŠ
I would like to consider myself an experienced and successful designer, researcher, and educator. I'm an Associate Professor in Communication Design and the Head of Education for the School of Design at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, where I've taught and researched for the last twenty years so I'm super passionate about this subject and love explaining how design works. Before joining academia, I worked internationally as a designer and creative director for numerous prestigious design and media organizations, including Philips, Time-Warner, Windmill Lane Pictures, and WPP in the UK, Ireland, USA, and Southeast Asia. Working in these different businesses and locations gave me a broad perspective on the role and importance of design.
As a graphic designer who moved into UX/UI design, this book really appeals to me.
It is super smart, as it takes branding firmly into the digital age by integrating classic visual identity design with the latest thinking on building digital brand experiences. It represents what graphic design in the twenty-first century should be aboutâŠ
The book is also beautifully laid out and illustrated with lots of infographics explaining the design process from start to finish, taking the reader from discovery, planning, and designing to delivering and distributing design to the marketplace.Â
Digital design plays a crucial role in how customers experience a brand. However, corporate websites and online shops are only part of interactive brand identity; complex user experiences closely interlink conception, design and technology, and integrate consistent prototyping and testing. The importance of mobile experience has grown exponentially in recent years, while interactive ads, chatbots and digital billboards are increasingly found in the real world. The interface is now the brand, and this changes the professional profile of designers.
This extensively updated edition of Branded Interactions is a practical handbook for professional digital designers and those just starting out. ItâŠ
I would like to consider myself an experienced and successful designer, researcher, and educator. I'm an Associate Professor in Communication Design and the Head of Education for the School of Design at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, where I've taught and researched for the last twenty years so I'm super passionate about this subject and love explaining how design works. Before joining academia, I worked internationally as a designer and creative director for numerous prestigious design and media organizations, including Philips, Time-Warner, Windmill Lane Pictures, and WPP in the UK, Ireland, USA, and Southeast Asia. Working in these different businesses and locations gave me a broad perspective on the role and importance of design.
A former student and friend who works in-house as a UX Design Director recommended this book to me.
It bridges the gap between successful design and business management. Most young designers start off by only seeing or interacting with their designs rather than being part of a much larger service design ecosystem. This book shares the essential principles of service design and, in the process, introduces designers to the strategic value of good design.
Service design is a rapidly growing area of interest in design and business management. There are a lot of books on how to get started, but this is the first book that describes what a 'good' service is and how to design one. This book lays out the essential principles for building services that work well for users. Demystifying what we mean by a 'good' and 'bad' service and describing the common elements within all services that mean they either work for users or don't.
A practical book for practitioners and non-practitioners alike interested in better service delivery, this bookâŠ
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother hadâŠ
I would like to consider myself an experienced and successful designer, researcher, and educator. I'm an Associate Professor in Communication Design and the Head of Education for the School of Design at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, where I've taught and researched for the last twenty years so I'm super passionate about this subject and love explaining how design works. Before joining academia, I worked internationally as a designer and creative director for numerous prestigious design and media organizations, including Philips, Time-Warner, Windmill Lane Pictures, and WPP in the UK, Ireland, USA, and Southeast Asia. Working in these different businesses and locations gave me a broad perspective on the role and importance of design.
There is so much understandable suspicion about how organisations use or misuse your personal data that it's hard to see the many potential benefits of data sharing. This book restores a little faith in technology and those who develop it for public benefit.
It is a compelling read, learning how data can be used for good and bad, with many references to the authorâs personal journey, from working in customer services to being an internet entrepreneur before becoming a researcher.
'An essential read' Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge
'We are currently living in a moment of extreme pessimism about data. This book will change your mind.'
It's impossible to escape digital technology. And with that comes fear. But whatever the news has told you about data and technology, think again. Data expert and tech insider turned Cambridge researcher Sam Gilbert shows that, actually, this data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us.
Good Data examines the incredible new ways this information explosion is already helping us - whether that'sâŠ
After a career that took me from designer to design professor, Iâve spent the past decade leading user research practices for growing product organizations. Iâm 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 itâs 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. Itâs 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 ofâŠ
There is a scene in the 1960 movie adaptation of The Time Traveler by HG Wells where the protagonist goes rapidly into the future as he watches a whole city spin into existence around him. Thatâs how I feel about my career. I started in 1994 and have watched UX grow into an incredible field! Iâve run my own business since 2008 focused exclusively on qualitative research consulting while also doing all sorts of exciting thought leadership activities â from writing to speaking to creating a number of courses on LinkedIn Learning â and I love to build my UX network too! I live in Silver Spring, Maryland.
This is an extremely comprehensive overview of most aspects of User Experience (UX).
Itâs the kind of book that you may never read from cover to cover (itâs over 800 pages!) but itâs exactly what Iâve appreciated having on my bookshelf when I need a quick how-to overview of a specific design or research method.
The discipline of user experience (UX) design has matured into a confident practice and this edition reflects, and in some areas accelerates, that evolution. Technically this is the second edition of The UX Book, but so much of it is new, it is more like a sequel.
One of the major positive trends in UX is the continued emphasis on design-a kind of design that highlights the designer's creative skills and insights and embodies a synthesis of technology with usability, usefulness, aesthetics, and meaningfulness to the user. In this edition a new conceptual top-down design framework is introduced to helpâŠ
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man sheâŠ
My interest in space history began with stamp collecting and continued much later with visits to Russian archives, Star City, and aerospace companies, and interviews with cosmonauts and space engineers, who often told their personal stories for the first time. As a historian of science and technology teaching at MIT, I was especially interested in cases where technology and society intertwined: cosmonauts and engineers lobbied politicians with competing agendas, personal rivalries tore apart ambitious projects, and pervasive secrecy perpetuated public myths and private counter-myths. My digging into tensions and arguments that shaped the Soviet space program resulted in two books, Soviet Space Mythologies and Voices of the Soviet Space Program.
The book interweaves the human story of risk and decision-making and the technological account of successes and failures of onboard computing in the Apollo program. It makes a fascinating comparison with the parallel story of techno-human systems in the Soviet space program explored in my book. While Soviet cosmonauts routinely served as a backup for automatics, American astronauts successfully fought to seize control of their missions from the computer and to perform manually each of the lunar landings.
The incredible story of how human pilots and automated systems worked together to achieve the ultimate achievement in flightâthe lunar landings of NASAâs Apollo program  As Apollo 11âs Lunar Module descended toward the moon under automatic control, a program alarm in the guidance computerâs software nearly caused a mission abort. Neil Armstrong responded by switching off the automatic mode and taking direct control. He stopped monitoring the computer and began flying the spacecraft, relying on skill to land it and earning praise for a triumph of human over machine. In Digital Apollo, engineer-historian David Mindell takes this famous moment asâŠ
I volunteered at my local library in small-town North Carolina from a very young age. One day I picked up Carl Saganâs Cosmos, cementing my love of science. Saganâs explanation that weâre all just a speck on the pale blue dot called Earth spoke to me and made me curious to know more. I begged my parents to let me go to Space Camp in Alabama and I went to North Carolina Governorâs School for Physics. I didnât pursue a scientific career but I always retained my love of science. When I finally became an author in my 40s, I knew I would someday write a sci-fi time travel romanceâeventually, A Paradox of Fates was born.
When I was researching time travel theories for A Paradox of Fates, I dove into this book and fell in love with Kakuâs writing all over again. Iâd read him previously, and he does a great job at explaining high-concept science at a common-sense level. This is a fantastic book for anyone curious about physics where understanding seems just out of reach.Â
From cyborgs, starships, UFOs, aliens and antimatter to telepathy, invisibility, psychokinesis and precognition, Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible is an exciting look at how science fiction could soon become science fact.
Albert Einstein said, 'If at first an idea does not sound absurd, there is no hope for it.' Physics of the Impossible shows how our most far-fetched ideas today - from Star Trek's phasers and teleportation to time travel as envisioned by Back to the Future - are destined to become tomorrow's reality.
Michio Kaku, bestselling science author and one of the world's most acclaimed physicists, looks atâŠ
Iâm a professor of computer science at Oregon State University. My research focus is on programming languages, but I also work on computer science education and outreach. I grew up in Germany and moved to the United States in 2000. Since computer science is a fairly new and not widely understood discipline, I am interested in explaining its core ideas to the general public. I believe that in order to attract a more diverse set of people to the field we should emphasize that coding is only a small part of computer science.
This book is about the design of artifacts that are used by humans. It discusses, in particular, how specific features of cognitive artifacts can support or impede their effective use. The physical artifacts discussed in this book provide concrete illustrations for some abstract computer science notions such as types. I have used some of the examples successfully in talks about computer science for the general audience. A focus of this book is on representations, which plays an important role in many areas of computer science. If you enjoy the examples discussed in this book and like to think about representations, then you are thinking like a computer scientist.Â
In Things That Make Us Smart, Donald A. Norman explores the complex interaction between human thought and the technology it creates, arguing for the development of machines that fit our minds, rather than minds that must conform to the machine.Humans have always worked with objects to extend our cognitive powers, from counting on our fingers to designing massive supercomputers. But advanced technology does more than merely assist with thought and memory,the machines we create begin to shape how we think and, at times, even what we value. Norman, in exploring this complex relationship between humans and machines, gives us theâŠ
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the worldâs most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the bookâŠ
Iâm passionate about flow for two reasons. First, I find the concept utterly fascinating. Second, Iâm convinced that flow is an absolute key to happiness, success, and well-being. If I can learn to experience more flow, that can make a big positive difference in my life. If I could learn to enter and exit flow at will, that would be powerful beyond belief. I need flow, and lots of it, for my growth and fulfillment (I think we all do).
I love reading scholarly articles and books. In my opinion, this book is the #1 academic book on the subject of flow. Itâs absolutely packed with information on the subject.
Some of my favorite chapters were those on the autotelic personality (which character traits facilitate or hinder flow?), the psychophysiology of flow (whatâs happening in the brain and body during flow?), and flow in the context of work (what are the benefits and what are the factors that make flow at work more or less likely?).
This second edition provides a review of the current flow research. The first, thoroughly revised and extended, part of the book, addresses basic concepts, correlates, conditions and consequences of flow experience. This includes the developments of the flow model, methods to measure flow, its physiological correlates, personality factors involved in the emergence of flow, social flow, the relationship of flow with performance and wellbeing, but also possible negative consequences of flow. The second, completely new, part of the book addresses flow in diverse contexts, in particular, work, development, sports, music and arts, and human computer interaction. As such, the bookâŠ
