UX Book(s)

[Craig Read]

I'm looking for a good book to get up to speed on UX.

I read Alan Cooper's "About Face" (many years ago), and have heard good things about Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think". Are there other books people would recommend over that one? And are there any Rails specific UX books people would recommend?

Cheers,

--
Craig Read
@Catharz
https://github.com/Catharz
http://code.google.com/p/bsss

[Gareth Townsend]

Don't Make me Think is a very good starting point.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman is a classic design book, highly recommended.

I don't know of any rails specific ones, and I don't think you would want to read one anyway. Design, interaction design and user experience stuff is (for the most part) technology independent.

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Cheers,
Gareth Townsend
http://www.garethtownsend.info

[Robert Gravina]

I found O'Reilly's "Designing Interfaces" really good.
http://designinginterfaces.com/

It's basically a book of UI design patterns, so if you like
programming pattern books then you'll like this. I found it much more
practical and useful than your average UX book, which is usually just
a bunch of waffle about the bleeding obvious.

Robert

[Jason Crane]

Hey Craig,

Is there any particular area of UX you're interested in? Research? Design? Testing?

About Face is a good tome that covers most of the field - which you've read.
Don't make me think is a good light-weight read.
Anything by Donald Norman (The Design of Everyday Things, Emotional Design) is also good.

For someone doing rails and dabbling in the UI part of it, I think Luke Wroblewski's "Web Form Design" is seminal, otherwise mix and match from the books below depending on what you're looking for.

My current UX bookshelf (dead-tree versions not included):

About Face 3 - Alan Cooper
Agile Experience Design - Lindsay Ratcliffe, Marc McNeill (currently reading)
The Agile Samurai - Rasmusson
The Black Swan - Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
Card Sorting - Donna Spencer
Change By Design - Tim Brown
Design Driven Innovation - Roberto Verganti
Designed for Use - Mathis
Designing Gestural Interfaces - Dan Safter
Designing Interfaces - Jenifer Tidwell
Designing Web Interfaces - Bill Scott, Therasa Neill
Elements of User Experience - Jesse James Garrett
Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Gamestorming - Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanunfo
The Innovator's Dilemma - Clayton M Christensen
Measuring the User Experience - Thomas Tullis, William Albert
Mental Models - Indi Young
Observing the User Experience - Mike Kuniavsky
Prototyping - Todd Zaki Warfel
Pull - David Siegel
Seductive Interaction Design - Stephen P Anderson
Simple and Usable - Giles Colborne
Sketching User Experiences - Bill Buxton
Smart Things - Mike Kuniavksy
Thinkertoys - Michael Michalko
Undercover User Experience Design - Cennydd Bowles, James Box
Universal Principles of Design - William Lidwell, Kritna Holden, Jill Butler
Web Form Design - Luke Wroblewski

J

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[Dmytrii Nagirniak]

Hi Craig,

I definitely can recommend another one - "Designed for use" from  PragProg:

http://pragprog.com/book/lmuse/designed-for-use

For me it felt like Grady Booch on Object Oriented Design, but for UX :)

Cheers,

Dmytrii

http://www.ApproachE.com

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[Ben Taylor]

Read this:

http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-web-design-ux-crash-course

Then follow links and grab the books you're interested in. I can also recommend you at least skim:

http://pragprog.com/book/lmuse/designed-for-use

 - Ben

[Ben Taylor]

In that patterns vs waffle vein, these are good:

http://www.uiparade.com/ and http://mobile-patterns.com

 - Ben

[Craig Read]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

@Jason, I'm more looking for something that's design oriented.

Most of my development experience has been win32 apps, and I can make reasonably elegant apps in that space.

But I'm struggling to make my web apps as pretty, or as elegant.

I picked up a copy of "Don't Make Me Think", and I think I'll grab a copy of "Designed for Use" and at least one of the Donald Norman books.

Thanks again for the suggestions. :)

Cheers,

Craig.

@Catharz

https://github.com/Catharz

http://stackoverflow.com/users/158893/catharz

[Aaron Moodie]

This is a really great book, and worth reading. 

The Humane Interface - Jef Raskin

http://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-Designing-Interactive/dp/0201379376

[Robert Gravina]

On 20 January 2012 10:18, Ben Taylor <tayb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In that patterns vs waffle vein, these are good:
> http://www.uiparade.com/ and http://mobile-patterns.com

Thanks for those! A coworker also suggested:
http://pttrns.com

Robert