Books for design

[Kelly Leahy]

Chris bilson was recommending some design books to help devs get better at design...

Oreilly - designing web interfaces - a bit of a cookbook for 'design guidelines' - bill scott, theresa neil

Oreilly - designing interfaces - tidwell

Also...
Engineering time & don't make me think - 2 books recommended by erick thompson

[Brad Wilson]

Add The Design of Everyday Things as an unconventional but very interested read.

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Brad    http://bradwilson.typepad.com/

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[Ted Neward]

“The Inmates Are Running The Asylum” is the seminal book in the field, if you ask me. (Geeks have to understand why geek-designed software doesn’t always resonate with non-geeks, and Inmates gets that message across pretty well, IMHO.)

 

Ted Neward

Java, .NET, XML Services

Consulting, Teaching, Speaking, Writing

http://www.tedneward.com

[David Foley]

On the unconventional note, Tufte's books are excellent:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi 

[Ronald Woan]

I think Brian Henderson pointed me to the Mix video Design
Fundamentals for Developers:

http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/02W

Apart from the Tufte books which seem more about static presentation
from my perspective, I think the canonical book is About Face 3 both
in theory and practice:

http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261324391&sr=1-1

I also really enjoyed Presentation Zen (which is about chartware but I
think some of the lessons carry over):

http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Design-Delivery/dp/0321525655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261324571&sr=1-1

[Ronald Woan]

Also if you want to hang out with some designers:

Refresh Seattle:
http://refreshseattle.org/

[Erick Thompson]

If anyone is interested in more technology focused books, I have some recommendations for HTML/CSS design, and how to achieve it "properly". That is, will work across resolutions, font sizes, OSes, etc. Let me know and I'll put together a list.

 

Erick

[Chris Bilson]

I really liked "Designing Web Interfaces" because it was right in the gap between conceptual books like "Don't Make Me Think" and more technology specific books about CSS and such. The book was loaded with screen shots that kind of made obvious the points they were trying to make about how to use color, contrast, functionality, etc. to achieve some usability goal. For me, a UX novice. Dreyfus level 1 in UX, this kind of cookie cutter / example based approach worked really well.

--c

[Erick Thompson]

I really liked Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm - it combines good UX ideas with good HTML/CSS to make it work. It's one of the rare technical books that I found I couldn't put down. Well written and interesting.

 

However, I would steer clean of his later work (More Bulletproof Web Design, etc). It's ok, but he makes some really dangerous assumptions that just aren't true. For example, that you can safely ignore IE 6 & 7, and to some degree 8, as they will disappear soon (IE6 still holds > 20% market share) in favor of open source browsers. He also assumes that HTML5 is a done deal, and so sites today can start writing towards it. Very dangerous IMHO, unless you're writing for a very controlled group.

 

Erick

[Ronald Woan]

I really like Expression Web... Doesn't generate any of the weird gorp
I might have expected from a MS tool. Real-time standards validation
and side by side browser rendering comparison...

Ron