I found The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin illuminating back in the days, if my memory serves most of the content is just as relevant today. Edward Tuftes books also contain plenty of wisdom and examples of good design.
Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
111–120 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#112(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…
Great resource!
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#113Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#114This seems like guerilla marketing for refactoringui.com
It could be that the OP was just inspired to ask about (other) books by the book's release.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any insight into the trend of UX designer --> Product designer? I see this transition in titles all over the place at big SF companies like Adobe, which is disheartening because now I'm expected to have a dribblesque visual/graphic design skill set (least interesting aspect of design imo) with less emphasis on design thinking, more on delivering assets, front-end code and letting UX researchers focus on generative (m…
>I'm interested in working on/solving big, "wicked" problems through UX design like self driving cars or improving healthcare. We need more people with these ambitions. Maybe you should be looking to create a forward-looking design firm focusing on the hard problems, rather than looking for a “job”.
I shall!
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#116(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…
Any insight into the trend of UX designer --> Product designer? I see this transition in titles all over the place at big SF companies like Adobe, which is disheartening because now I'm expected to have a dribblesque visual/graphic design skill set (least interesting aspect of design imo) with less emphasis on design thinking, more on delivering assets, front-end code and letting UX researchers focus on generative (m…
Basically, "UX Design" has become "Product Design" because almost no one wants to spend the time to evaluate what makes a good UX Designer. It's much easier to judge the visual aesthetic than to understand the process that made something comprehensible and an individuals skill at implementing and molding that process to get to that outcome. So they became lumped together. SF and "tech" companies need to scale and fast, so they assume "hey this person made something pretty, I'm sure the rest will fall into place" and now we are really just hiring for visual design. Even the companies that swear up and down they are about "process" you'll find little actual evidence or mention of it in their dribbble-bait portfolios. The excuse is often given "we move too fast to not ship and learn later", but a good design process should actual save time and resources in the end. As the company matures this weakness will come to light and then you'll get a combination of a dedicated research team and Product Managers actually completing the UX work with the Product Designers executing the vision in the form of juicy mockups. It seems like it's a significant step back. /rant
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#1171. Contextual design, holzblat How to understand and structure a user's life and environment and what to look for when they are struggling with a problem or using your product. 2. Lean Customer Development, Cindy Alvarez Practical and immediately useful guide to interviewing and talking to users. Read after the Contextual Inquiry book above. If that book teaches what to understand about a user's workflow and environm…
These are my goto recs, with About Face being first. The first few chapters are incredibly practical.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#118I think the best actionable UI advice is: https://refactoringui.com/ If you like the design tips, they just released their full-length book a few days ago!
Ironically from the same author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18614071
I don't understand why I'm being downvoted. I follow one of the authors on Twitter (Steve Schoger) and I think his design tips are fantastic. I haven't purchased the book (yet) as I think it's a bit spendy, but I have so much admiration for Steve and Adam, so I'm sharing here.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are any of those prototyping tools open source and free?
"the best is paper prototyping"
I used to think that prototyping on a paper is expensive since paper is non-reusable. Then I proceeded to prototype on an expensive tablet.
Funny looking back at it now.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#120(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…
Any insight into the trend of UX designer --> Product designer? I see this transition in titles all over the place at big SF companies like Adobe, which is disheartening because now I'm expected to have a dribblesque visual/graphic design skill set (least interesting aspect of design imo) with less emphasis on design thinking, more on delivering assets, front-end code and letting UX researchers focus on generative (m…
If you're applying blind to places, then you're going to be facing the entire field of other people applying blind and you're going to be at a structural disadvantage as you noticed.
The key is that you're far along enough in your career that you should never be applying blind. Always try to get a warm intro and always try and schedule an informal meeting with the hiring manager before you go through the formal interview process. That way, they're not just reading pages of user research, they're seeing how that user research affects your process & how you think about problems.
Almost nobody who is currently being hired to work on big wicked problems are getting there by throwing their resume into a pile so the process isn't designed to see those people out. The way to get those jobs is to be the only person they were ever even considering for that job.