"Save The Pixel" by Ben Hunt is a hidden gem.
It's an ebook, but don't let that fool you.
Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
51–60 of 91 posts
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#52How has Bruce Tognazzini's stuff not been mentioned yet? Tog on Software and Tog on Interface are great. https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Software-Design-Bruce-Tognazzini/... https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Interface-Bruce-Tognazzini/dp/020...
Bruce Tognazzini also has a great web site
see his short course on interaction design
http://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/
and
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#53I still really like and would strongly recommend Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321344758)
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#54Have a look at http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week-1. I have not read all articles of this blog but the first few give meaningful UX insight.
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#55Joel Spolsky's "User Interface Design for Programmers" is concise, educational, entertaining... and free (even an easy-to-read all-in-one HTML page): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html Also highly recommend Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" (as others have already commented): http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html
From Joel Spolskey page: > "Another example from the world of Microsoft Windows is the Alt+Tab key combination which switches to the "next" window. Most users would probably assume that it simply rotates among all available windows. If you have window A, B, and C, with A active, Alt+Tab should take you to B. Alt+Tab again would take you to C. Actually, what happens is that the second Alt+Tab takes you back to A. The…
Insightful quote but I disagree that users 'get' Cmd+Tab. I have to explain it to most people.
Maybe you just have smarter friends. ;)
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#56Don't use anything less than 5 years old, because it'll try to get you to make PC software look like it belongs on a smartphone.
Actually a good comment :)
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#57Check out Nathan Barry's book Designing Web Applications: http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/
It's accessible, not too long, and yet still packed with good info on the basics of ui design and user experience.
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#58The original Macintosh User Interface Guidelines are still worth a read. Some of them have been forgotten. A good one is "You should never have to tell the computer something it already knows".
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#59Alan Cooper's About Face. It's quite old - the latest ed is from 2007 - but it is still very good at introducing goal-oriented design and lots of practical design concepts.
Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate more? This sounds like an interesting thought.
Sure. The book, and Tufte, focuses on effectively displaying quantitative information. He takes a relatively hard line about it and I have found it one of the most useful texts for helping me take "some truth the system knows" to "some truth the user knows". Of course you have to take it with a few pinches of salt. Firstly it is largely his opinion. Studies into this area are rather good on the general points however…
There are two more books, on concepts I believe, and verbs.
It's not the most practical way to learn UI design, but I enjoy how well it makes the case for good UI. Too often, I see programmers dismiss design. It seems not to fit into their scheme of values, i. e. "it's not scientific" or "it's just shiny packaging " or "it's something for beginners – I'm an expert". Then you get some guy replace all custom fonts on npmjs.com wit Arial because "all sans-serifs look the same anyway".
(the example is more "design" than "user interface" but it's the best one I remember)