This seems like guerilla marketing for refactoringui.com
Author of that book here, I swear to god had nothing to do with this thread, just stumbled upon it myself perusing HN. Wish I could prove it somehow :(
Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
131–140 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to offer a contrarian contrarian viewpoint. I certainly agree that engineers should not be shut out of the process, by default. There are some engineers who are good at UI design, like you and me, and their deep technical knowledge helps them invent unique solutions. However most engineers aren't and I wouldn't expect them to be either. I went out of my way to learn UI design and psychology, but most engine…
Super contrarian view - information architecture is the most fundamental aspect of product design. And a database "backend" represents the atomic model for a product's IA (with API being the next layer). Perhaps the engineer was contributing something crucial to the product design, you just couldn't grok it. Product design is so much more than UI/UX, fwiw.
This is more true for some products than others.
I worked on one product which involved a massive store of XML documents and a suite of somewhat complicated serializations and transformations. It was the right architecture for the project, for sure. And it was definitely the fundamental gene of the product; all of the product's design had to flow from this XML-heavy information architecture and backend.
But most of the products I've seen are not so unique. For the vast majority of web products out there, simple CRUD apps backed by a relational database, I don't think the information architecture needs to be front and center in product design conversations. People can make assumptions about this kind of app and they usually won't be too far off the mark.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#133This seems like guerilla marketing for refactoringui.com
Admittedly you're the one talking about it
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#134(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…
> I'm interested in working on/solving big, "wicked" problems through UX design like self driving cars or improving healthcare. Should I get a PhD in HCI and focus on something fulfilling rather than improving the UX of boring SaaS CRUD apps?
For the most part, HCI professors don't care about healthcare and healthcare mostly doesn't care about HCI, for non-obvious reasons.
If you want to work on self-driving cars, maybe get a MS in machine learning and HCI (or human-centered AI if you can make that happen)? If you want to improve healthcare, maybe get a healthcare degree.
(Update: if I were a professor in HCI I might actually tell you yes, come work with/for me ;)
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're being downvoted because of the unfortunate timing of this post and the potential commercial bias of your answer. People come to HN to discuss things that hold real intellectual value and not to get subtle ads. Suggesting an e-book that was released yesterday looks like blatant advertising even if that's not your intention. I really find hard to believe that someone can legitimately recommend and stand behind a…
I didn't say the book is the best actionable UI advice, I said http://refactoringui.com is, whose content is free. All I said about the book is that it's available if you seem to like all the other content. I made no comment about how good the book is, as I haven't bought it, but I think it's fair to assume it's an extension of the rest of their work.
I get it. I do believe you're genuine about it, tbh. But I wanted to explain why you're being downvoted and why your answer may not be the most valuable or suitable in a thread about the "best book on modern UI/UX."
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#136(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…
Weird question, but why is there so much bad UI out there? Do you feel like you've failed as a field when commonly used applications like Gmail and adobe reader have such bad user experiences?
I think Gmail has great UI, but I recognize that assessment is partially a matter of taste and partially a function of how I think.
Better UI/UX doesn't always lead to better business outcomes.. Sad, but true.
It's (arguably) a young[er] field, relative to software or hardware engineering. Maybe things will get better :)
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#137(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?
It's hard to simulate non-trivial interactivity with paper. In real life, teams are not always co-located, and software tools facilitate collaboration in different ways.
If anything, the public(consumer)'s appetite for graphic/visual/UX design has gotten a lot stronger in the decade since research was done on paper prototyping. High-quality animations and subtle interaction techniques, explosion in form factors and devices / mobile operating system [versions], and the rise of non-technical app builders may have also encouraged the development of such tools.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say the book is the best actionable UI advice, I said http://refactoringui.com is, whose content is free. All I said about the book is that it's available if you seem to like all the other content. I made no comment about how good the book is, as I haven't bought it, but I think it's fair to assume it's an extension of the rest of their work.
I get it. I do believe you're genuine about it, tbh. But I wanted to explain why you're being downvoted and why your answer may not be the most valuable or suitable in a thread about the "best book on modern UI/UX."
I get what you're saying, but I still stand by my answer. I've read many of the books discussed in this post, from Don Norman to Jef Raskin to Edward Tufte, and I think Steve and Adam's work is far more practical and actionable than most of the other stuff. If you want to chew on UI/UX philosophy (it really is interesting), then sure, read Tufte, but if you want to improve the design of real UIs without all the intellectual posturing, Refactoring UI is better.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#139Earlier 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…
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 fas…
> Basically, "UX Design" has become "Product Design" ...
They are getting closer, but not quite. Consider two analogies:
1. Craigslist v. AirBnB to get a short term rental apartment. Both are arguably the same "product", the differentiation is that AirBnB has a much better UX experience.
2. eBay v. Sothebys to put goods on auction. Here, it's not really UX that differentiates them, it's product-market fit.
In the second example, a product designer would arguably be a better fit for differentiating the technical and business processes. A UX designer would then implement those ideas in the precise user flow.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?
#140HCI is a big field with a lot of different specialties. Since the original query was about modern websites, I would point out that these are essentially operating according to the classic windows (WIMP) paradigm. (The mobile versions are different). In my reading, one of the best expositions of how to design a desktop application can be found in Apple's 1993 Human Interface Guidelines:
http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf