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Design Thinking Books (2024)

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Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#21

Post by philote »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #12

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

I took a Computer Science class decades ago that used that book as the core of the class material. I don't remember a single thing about that class now except that I hate that book and the professor bragging about designing cockpit instruments or some such. I learned more out of a cognitive psych class.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#22

Post by kennyk37 »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #12

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

i also picked up the book with high hopes and dropped off about where you are at. useful concepts like affordances and signifiers but felt like a lot of filler.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#24

Post by spinningslate »

huhtenberg wrote: post #19

Design thinking is a human-centered, iterative approach to creative problem- solving, focusing on deeply understanding users' needs to develop innovative solutions through phases like Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Apparently. It's not immediately clear how it's different from your good old "regular" design.

I think that's the point. The underpinning exhortation is to "think about design" where the outcome is something that successfully addresses users needs, is feasible to create, and commercially viable.

"Design Thinking" as a brand has codified that in several ways - not all successful. But the underlying principle is sound: there are plenty of examples of products/services that failed to address one or more of the 3 dimensions.

I found this quote from the linked article [0] more helpful:

> Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

[0]: https://www.designorate.com/design-thinking-guide-what-why-h...

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#25

Post by WillAdams »

kaizenb wrote: post #14
password54321 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really a tasteful collection. It is just a bunch of popular books, all of which that I have read being about minimalism. If that's what you want you can just use Apple as a case study because that's what you end up getting if you want "modern" and minimal. Even just drop the CSS file from source into an LLM and go through how it is implemented.

Any suggestions are welcome. I would be happy to increase the quality of the library.

My first recommendation would be to impose a hierarchy --- surely the books can be grouped in some fashion useful to the viewer? Perhaps by the intended reader? So maybe:

- beginning designer

- developer working with designer

- developer working without assistance from a designer

- supervisor working with team of designers and developers

Long flat lists of undifferentiated items are a common problem in design and your page not solving that is decidedly not confidence-building.

Also, was surprised not to see what I consider one of the best books on visual interface design listed:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/344729.Designing_Visual_...

Unfortunately, this book was marred reputationally by the reissue having a ghastly cover and poor quality screengrab reproductions --- track down a first edition if possible.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#26

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #12

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

For me the real capability unlock from The Design of Everyday Things was that it made me start noticing and thinking deliberately about design decisions, which pushed me to begin evaluating everything through that lens. In general it comes down to looking at something and asking "what is good / effective and what is bad / annoying about this". If you keep doing that enough you develop your own taste and a greater appreciation of the world. Donald Norman isn't handing you a map, he's teaching you how to build your own.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#27

Post by yashasolutions »

huhtenberg wrote: post #19

Design thinking is a human-centered, iterative approach to creative problem- solving, focusing on deeply understanding users' needs to develop innovative solutions through phases like Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Apparently. It's not immediately clear how it's different from your good old "regular" design.

it is not - just a way to position design and untie it from the visual output that is also called design. Design thinking will not make you a logo (but a logo designer could pretty much do design thinking...)

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#28

Post by davidivadavid »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #12

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

"Bible of design" might be a bit excessive. It's a good design 101 book. Definitely longer than it should be, and kind of fumbles the explanation of "affordances", which the author had to clarify later. It's representative of "design thinking" as a historically well-situated concept in design, but that's not necessarily a good thing in itself.

It really depends what you're looking for. If you want something deeper, more abstract, I would recommend going straight to something like Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander, which I think typically appeals to the more abstraction-oriented part of the mind of engineers. If you want to get more actionable, practical day to day recipes, Refactoring UI as suggested somewhere else in the thread is a decent suggestion.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#29

Post by xandrius »

WillAdams wrote: post #20
Brajeshwar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Devs/Engineers and even many designers, things some of us tend to take for granted were amazing to them. So, my first recommendation is to read Refactoring UI end-to-end and keep a copy handy at your desk. https://www.refactoringui.com PS. Refactoring UI is from the guys who created TailwindCSS.

$99 for a 218 page PDF which, while it has a Goodreads page which rates it highly: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43190966-refactoring-... doesn't have a working "Purchase on Amazon" link, and searching there for: "Refactoring UI Adam Wathan , Steve Schoger" returns no results. One can get two "free" chapters in exchange for one's e-mail address. Book deal fall through? Why?

Either you want to support the authors and give them the price they ask or don't. You being on this platform gives me the assumption that you can definitely find pretty much any PDF on the Internet for free, in a way or another.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#30

Post by yakkomajuri »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #26
yakkomajuri wrote: post #12

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

For me the real capability unlock from The Design of Everyday Things was that it made me start noticing and thinking deliberately about design decisions, which pushed me to begin evaluating everything through that lens. In general it comes down to looking at something and asking "what is good / effective and what is bad / annoying about this". If you keep doing that enough you develop your own taste and a greater app…

Yes this I agree with and was my whole goal with the book
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