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Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

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Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#61

Some of the reading list in the UI/UX course at Brown: http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1300/ Particularly (free links with pdfs), Don Norman - Design of Everyday Things https://archive.org/details/DesignOfEverydayThings Bill Buxton - Input Manuscript http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html Alan Cooper - About Face http://feiramoderna.net/download/pos-positivo/COOPER-Alan/Ab... Vignelli - The Vignelli Canon htt…

I got the book Sketching User Experiences:The workbook(different from the Sketching User Experience), don't buy that book. It also has Bill Buxton as its author, but has only some references from the original book.

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#62
There are many books talking about UX/UI design, but most of them are quite abstract and do not tell you, when exactly, on which stage of your software development process to apply the knowledge they present. This often leads to a typical mistake done by developers, that I've seen in too many projects, when UI design is considered at later stages of the project, when they are starting coding the UI and all the backend is already done. Because of that, the process is equally important and needs some of your attention.

To achieve really good results in UX design, to do it at the right time, I'd recommend to start not from the books, but from the interaction design specialization on Coursera at https://en.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design or you can take just intro - https://en.coursera.org/learn/human-computer-interaction. You can take the courses for free and they'll give you the necessary mindset and understanding of process. You'll find that product design actually starts from UX, not ends with it and it defines the necessary requirements framework for the system architecture, which you can use later in combination with BDD/DDD. After that course you can start reading the books (Steve Krug, Don Norman, Alan Cooper, indeed!) and platform guidelines (my favorites are for Google Material Design and Microsoft's Modern UI).

It will be great if someone here recommends some books or articles about UX design process and integration of it into popular agile methodologies.

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#63
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, it's a bit dated (check out those screenshots!)... but the fundamental concepts are still valid. He's trying to explain that you should make programs behave as the user would expect them to -- but it's up to you as the developer to use your judgement to know what the common expectations of the time and platform are.

I was taught this as "The Principle of Least Surprise" or do the thing that causes the least surprise.

Where it gets tricky is that as programmers we are also power users and our mental model of what we expect to happen and what a user expects to happen diverge, I try to have empathy for the user.

One of my tricks is to imagine what my mum would expect to happen (not because she's a woman, it's not a sexism thing I hasten to add) but because she's a 60yo woman who didn't start using a computer until she was in her 40's and is slightly wary of them still.

If it passes the mum test then I know I'm on the right track.

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#64
I keep re-reading The UI Audit by Jane Portman:

http://uibreakfast.com/audit/

I use it every time I need to craft an interface but especially for SaaS apps. The OP requested something from a 'newbie perspective'; this book will explain the basics but the real value comes from the explanations and advice with respect to why UI decisions lead to happier users.

I've copy/pasted the chapter headings from the site:

Introduction

Chapter 1. Your Product Strategy

Chapter 2. Navigation

Chapter 3. Dashboard & Homescreen

Chapter 4. Audit Your Screens

Chapter 5. The Problem of Style

Chapter 6. Get a Theme

Chapter 7. Plan for Improvements

Chapter 8. Deal With New Features

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#65

Alan 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.

There's a 2014 edition that I've been reading (slowly) over the past several months.

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#66

I keep re-reading The UI Audit by Jane Portman: http://uibreakfast.com/audit/ I use it every time I need to craft an interface but especially for SaaS apps. The OP requested something from a 'newbie perspective'; this book will explain the basics but the real value comes from the explanations and advice with respect to why UI decisions lead to happier users. I've copy/pasted the chapter headings from the site: Introd…

Well, I tried to download the sample chapter by entering my email address and clicking "Send Me the Free Chapter". But instead I got subscribed on an email list.

So I'm afraid I have to say: that UI really sucks :)

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#67
Nielsen Norman Group has a blog archive[0] spanning over 20 years, with posts from Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini, among others. For example:

"10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design" by Jakob Nielsen, January 1, 1995 [1]

[0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/

[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#68

Alan 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.

There's a 2014 edition that I've been reading (slowly) over the past several months.

Oh, good point, I hadn't noticed that he has published the 4th ed.

Re: Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?

#69

Nielsen Norman Group has a blog archive[0] spanning over 20 years, with posts from Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini, among others. For example: "10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design" by Jakob Nielsen, January 1, 1995 [1] [0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ [1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

The one about heuristics is my favorite one, because the checklist is being used literally on daily basis.
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