Top UX Design Books

Q&A with Laura Klein, author of "UX for Lean Startups" Q. Why is your book timely-- what makes it important right now? A. We're seeing a massive increase in the demand for well-designed, easy-to-use products. At the same time, we're seeing an incredible shortage of designers who can work at the sort of fast-paced, data-driven, innovative startups that are popping up.

Steve Krug is a usability consultant who has more than 15 years of experience as a user advocate for companies like Apple, Netscape, AOL, Lexus, and others. Based in part on the success of the first edition of Don't Make Me Think, he has become a highly sought-after speaker on usability design.

The recurring metaphor in The Inmates are Running the Asylum is that of the dancing bear--the circus bear that shuffles clumsily for the amusement of the audience. Such bears, says author Alan Cooper, don't dance well, as everyone at the circus can see. What amazes the crowd is that the bear dances at all.

Dan Saffer is a Director of Interaction Design at Smart Design. He is the author of Designing for Interaction: Creating Innovative Applications and Devices (New Riders), Designing Gestural Interfaces (O'Reilly), and Designing Devices. Since 1995, he has designed appliances, devices, software, websites, and services that are used by millions of people every day.

"In the space of a few chapters, Kristina Halvorson's little book changed our field forever for the better. This second edition retains all that was wonderful in the first book while yielding dazzling new insights into the hows and whys of content strategy."

Russ Unger is a user experience design and research professional in the Chicago area. He has worked with top-tier digital agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and startups. He has presented and led workshops at events like South by Southwest, Web 2.0, and UX Week, and is an occasional contributor to various online UX magazines.

Anyone who designs anything to be used by humans--from physical objects to computer programs to conceptual tools--must read this book, and it is an equally tremendous read for anyone who has to use anything created by another human.

You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity.

Q&A with Alistair Croll, coauthor of "Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster" Q. Why is your book timely-- what makes it important right now? A. There's been a flurry of startup activity made possible by the lowered barriers to entry of cloud computing, social media, and app platforms. But there's less accountability.

Jeff Gothelf on How to Do Lean UX in 5 Easy Steps Solve problems together: Ensure that every member of your team is present during brainstorming for new projects. Give your teams problems to solve, not solutions to implement.

Peter Morville is president of Semantic Studios, an information architecture, user experience, and findability consultancy. For over a decade, he has advised such clients as AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Harvard Business School, Internet2, Procter & Gamble, Vanguard, and Yahoo. Peter is best known as a founding father of information architecture, having co-authored the field's best-selling book, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web".

Bill Buxton and I share a common belief that design leadership together with technical leadership drives innovation. Sketching, prototyping, and design are essential parts of the process we use to create new products. Bill Buxton brings design leadership and creativity to Microsoft.

Techno author Norman, a professor of computer science and cofounder of a consulting firm that promotes human-centered products, extends the range of his earlier work, The Design of Everyday Things, to include the role emotion plays in consumer purchases. According to Norman, human decision making is dependent on both conscious cognition and affect (conscious or subconscious emotion).

When the first edition of About Face was published in 1995, the idea of designing products based on human goals was a revolutionary concept. Thanks to the work of Alan Cooper and other pioneers, interaction design is now widely recognized as a unique and vital discipline, but our work is far from finished.This completely updated volume presents the effective and practical tools you need to design great desktop applications, Web 2.0 sites, and mobile devices.

Luke shares his secrets in this book, which should be required reading for every graphic designer, project manager, interaction designer, or usability researcher who might ever work on a Web form. Web Form Design is that rare book capable of transforming the way an entire field does its business.