Pick a book to read for December's UX Book Club

[fstorr]

Hi!

Firstly, thanks to everyone who came out to October's UX Book Club to discuss The User Experience Team Of One at Mozilla's new office. It was a great evening with excellent discussions, and the biggest turnout we've ever had in the three years I've been here in Portland. With all that in mind, it's time to pick a book to read for December. There's some really interesting titles here, including a new edition of a design classic. Have a read below, then go ahead and vote on what you want to read.

Why We Fail

Just as pilots and doctors improve by studying crash reports and postmortems, experience designers can improve by learning how customer experience failures cause products to fail in the marketplace. Rather than proselytizing a particular approach to design, Why We Fail holistically explores what teams actually built, why the products failed, and how we can learn from the past to avoid failure ourselves.

The Design Of Everyday Things (Revised And Expanded)

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. NB: this book is published on November 5th

Interviewing Users

Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. You'll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.

Just Enough Research

In Just Enough Research, co-founder of Mule Design Erika Hall distills her experience into a brief cookbook of research methods. Learn how to discover your competitive advantages, spot your own blind spots and biases, understand and harness your findings, and why you should never, ever hold a focus group. You’ll start doing good research faster than you can plan your next pitch.

UX For Lean Startups

Great user experiences (UX) are essential for products today, but designing one can be a lengthy and expensive process. With this practical, hands-on book, you’ll learn how to do it faster and smarter using Lean UX techniques. UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product to market.

Okay, so now you've read all of that, don't forget to vote on what you want to read!

Have fun!

Regards

Francis

@uxbookclubpdx @fstorr