Editors note: The following article was updated on March, 2024, to offer relevant information about available UI/UX design resources and blogs.
Want to be an excellent designer? Looking for the best UI/UX books and resources? Nowhere to go or to gain the right and effective channel for becoming an outstanding UI/UX designer? Just follow me, I have compiled a list of high-profile UI/UX books, which are recommended by the major professional websites, and blogs.The topic is mainly covering UI design, UX design, and web design. Hope it is helpful and useful to you. Any resource you think it’s worth to be included, please feel free to give a message below the comment area or simply drop me a line on LinkedIn.
1.The Design of Everyday Things - By Donald A. Norman
It shows a teapot on the cover of the book, the teapot spout and the handle at the same side, if you tea, you are likely to burn yourself. What Norman want to tell you, the life is hard, often the "bad design" should be blamed. To learn interaction well, you must understand what’s the design requirements from people at first. As Steve Jobs said, “Design is not just what is looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” The ultimate purpose of the designer is to make useful products, not just good-looking.
2.Don’t Make Me Think - By Steve Krug
3.The Non-Designer's Design Book - By Robin Williams
Interaction designers must learn the basic knowledge of typography, no aesthetic, you can not be a good designer. In this ubiquitous creativity era, you have to make yourself be a designer.
In the eyes of Robin Williams, the design is quite simple. The book covers the four graphic design principles of C.R.A.P(Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity), with concise, humor, and vivid language recounts the how much the changes and visible benefits brought by using these principles flexibly. In addition, it also introduces some basic knowledge about color and font, making the content more completely.
1.The Elements of User Experience - By Jesse James Garrett
If all you need is a book to teach you “how to design”, there are many, many books discuss how to build a website, but this one is not you wanted. If all you need is a book to tell you about technology, you can not find a line of code here. If you want to find an answer in this book, on the contrary, this book teaches you “how to ask the right questions.”
This book will tell you what you need to know in advance before you read other books. This book is for you, if you need a great concept, and if you need to understand the environment that user experience designers make decisions.
For user experience designers in the field or in the making (2nd Edition) - By Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler
“If you are a young designer entering or contemplating entering the UX field this is a canonical book. If you are an organization that really needs to start grokking UX this book is also for you.”-- Chris Bernard.）
3.Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (2nd Edition) - By Dan M. Brown
Successful web design team relies on good communication between developers and customers, but also inseparable from communication within the development team members. Dan Brown will teach you through this book, wireframes, site maps, flow charts and other design established a common language. Through it, the designers and project teams can capture ideas, track progress and always allow stakeholders to know the latest situation of the project.
4.About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design - By Alan Cooper,Robert Reimann,David Cronin,Christopher Noessel
As one of the must-read classic books, About Face series are worth the time to read, and each version is very valuable. As one of the instrumental books, AF brings interaction into the daily language of product design and development. Which is a comprehensive guide on interface design and interaction design of web and mobile devices. This book covers the best practices of project progress, goal-oriented design, persona development. For beginners who have no project experience, it may be very difficult, but still worth reading. We recommend cursory read at the first time and then study the rest part carefully when needed, because it involves too many details.
"If Norman is an old man telling stories, Krug is a crash expert let you simply entry design, while Cooper is a scholar, researcher, designer."
UX Websites & Blogs
1. Lukew
Lukew, a senior UX expert on digital product leader who has designed and built software used by more than one billion people worldwide also the founder of several companies.
A comprehensive website provides high-quality articles with the UX employee on Design, Coding, Mobile, and Word Press etc.
3. UXbooth
A professional UX website. The difference between it and Smashing Magazine is that UXbooth focuses more on the aspect of user experience design.
It’s a new blog with very simple and clean interface, no more distraction from advertisements or others. Articles are all surrounding the topics of design tools, UI/UX design, web design, and mobile app design. A good design topic resource to follow.
5. UXness
The UXness Blog is your portal to a richer understanding of User Experience (UX) design. It's a treasure trove of insightful articles that dissect key topics like: UX fundamentals, Emerging UX trends, Practical UX design tips and tricks, Inspiring UX case studies, UX events, UX Tools, UX Books and UX principles and laws etc. UXness is a community of 35K+ UX enthusiasts connect across the globe and have ~2K daily article reads.
About Author
Grace Jia
Prototyping tools, UI&UX news & information, article sharer, writer.
Email: grace@jongde.com
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