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Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#11

Post by troymc »

amelius wrote: post #10
jasonhong wrote: post #7

(For background, I'm a faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute) For best books, it depends on if you want to understand users or do implementation. But generally, I'd highly recommend Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things to improve how you look at the world, and Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think for simple and practical design tips. For tools, the best is paper prototypi…

Are any of those prototyping tools open source and free?

"the best is paper prototyping"

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#12

Post by alistairSH »

amelius wrote: post #10
jasonhong wrote: post #7

(For background, I'm a faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute) For best books, it depends on if you want to understand users or do implementation. But generally, I'd highly recommend Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things to improve how you look at the world, and Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think for simple and practical design tips. For tools, the best is paper prototypi…

Are any of those prototyping tools open source and free?

Design of Everyday Things & Don't Make Me Think are both likely to be in your employer's library, or on a co-worker's shelf. Not quite free, but I bet you can find a hard-copy to borrow.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#13

Post by dmcy22 »

amelius wrote: post #10
jasonhong wrote: post #7

(For background, I'm a faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute) For best books, it depends on if you want to understand users or do implementation. But generally, I'd highly recommend Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things to improve how you look at the world, and Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think for simple and practical design tips. For tools, the best is paper prototypi…

Are any of those prototyping tools open source and free?

Adobe XD is a free tool for prototyping, though not Open Source.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#14

Post by towndrunk »

acconrad wrote: post #5

I think these guys just put out a book which I'm intrigued to read: https://refactoringui.com/book/ If you're looking for something more bite-sized, I offer a mini course on getting the bare bones established for modern UIs: https://anonconsulting.com/ui-crash-course/ (pardon the SSL cert issue I need to resolve)

$80 bucks... uh no.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#15

Post by checkyoursudo »

troymc wrote: post #11
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any of those prototyping tools open source and free?

"the best is paper prototyping"

This was true when I was doing it in grad school in 2000ish as well. I would not be surprised if it was true long before that and will remain so long after today.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#16

Post by johnl1479 »

jasonhong wrote: post #7

(For background, I'm a faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute) For best books, it depends on if you want to understand users or do implementation. But generally, I'd highly recommend Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things to improve how you look at the world, and Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think for simple and practical design tips. For tools, the best is paper prototypi…

> For schools, some to check out would be Georgia Tech, University of Washington's Master's of HCI, Indiana University, University of Michigan iSchool, and (of course) Carnegie Mellon's Master's of HCI.

As a graduate of University of Washington's Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) master's program, I would recommend that if you are interested in understanding 'what' makes a good UI or UX instead of 'how' to make a good UI or UX.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#18

Post by barbecue_sauce »

dmcy22 wrote: post #13
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any of those prototyping tools open source and free?

Adobe XD is a free tool for prototyping, though not Open Source.

Is it useful without the rest of their creative suite? I only ask because Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop are most effective when used together and obviously designed for that kind of synergy.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?

#19

Post by wwweston »

jasonhong wrote: post #7

(For background, I'm a faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute) For best books, it depends on if you want to understand users or do implementation. But generally, I'd highly recommend Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things to improve how you look at the world, and Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think for simple and practical design tips. For tools, the best is paper prototypi…

If paper is the best, how would you characterize the place of tools like Balsamiq / Axure etc? Might they be symptoms of app/tech addiction, or do they facilitate anything specific?
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