One of the things I've been asked to do at MS is provide an overview of how a person new to UX might begin to get up to speed. Over the course of my time in the field, I've found the following books are particularly good as either instruction or reference.
The basics & mindset:
About Face 2.0 by Alan Cooper – It’s an excellent start to putting oneself into the UCD (User Centric Design) mindset. The process and tools around persona development are also invaluable.
Learning fundamentals & history:
Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge is a pretty amazing book. It covers the history of interaction design, along with his own design philosophies. Plus, it includes a DVD of interviews with design luminaries.
Designing for Interaction by Dan Staffer is a relatively new book on interaction design. I’ve just picked it up and am working my way through. It focuses on great interaction design – essential for any good UX
Gathering requirements, testing and ideation:
Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky is the best survey of user research / prototyping tools around. It’s a fantastic resource for testing the prototype designs, using contextual inquiry to help determine the design.
Serious Play by Michael Schrage is a great book about the importance of prototyping in general. This is more of a business book - in specific about making prototyping central to driving innovation at your company. That said, prototyping represents a great opportunity for UX. Prototyping is particularly important when designing UXs – imagining how the design will feel isn’t enough!
Thinking more broadly:
The power of innovation by Dr. Min Basadur is a book I haven’t read, use his teaching extensively. It is a really powerful way to get out of your own way when trying to develop new solutions to complex problems. Garry VanPatter and Elizabeth Pastor (of NextD and Humantific) are also in the same school of thought in their innovation facilitation work.
Systems Thinking by Jamshid Gharajedaghi is one of those breath-takingly smart books. This is another business book, but great for thinking about the broader context of the User Experience (there are no mono-causal problems, after all).
Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling is a design manifesto. It's focused on the changing relationship between users and the products they use.
Ongoing education & Online resources:
Design Thinking Digest (of course!) - you're here after all...
AskTog's First Principles - an essential reference of interaction design principles that we should all have committed to memory.
Usability in the News - great round-up of all the latest UX related postings online
NextD – online journal focusing on the what’s next in design
Functioning Form - great design blog
Looks good works well - another great design blog by Bill Scott, Yahoo's AJAX evangelist.
Boxes and Arrows - an information architecture / interaction design focused web magazine
Interaction Design Association – Interaction Designers Association. Mostly a mailing list, but a great community resource
What have I missed? What are your favorite books?
MS should be making the issue of design and user experience more visible to developers and architects. Should MSDN be expanded to include UX and design? I definitely think so, but it seems MS wants to distance or appear to have some separation of design from development. I have visited microsoft.com/design, there are a bunch of old articles and videos, but I don't see any blogs.
Why isn’t your blog on that site?
It seems MS is focused on impressing designers with flashy media based apps, but I design and develop apps for lines-of-business. I understand that currently it's MS's coming out party for UX/WPF and that showing off the platform and what it can do is important to getting professional designers on board.
I have a lot of UX and design to catch up on; I am currently reading Designing for Interaction but there is so much more.
A little more help for developers from MS would help.
Posted by: Marlon Smith | February 06, 2007 at 04:54 PM
hey there,
I always include "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman on my list of must read UX Books.
I'd also include conferences you should attend as "New to UX" person:
IA Summit (Mar 22-26 in LV) -- www.iasummit.org
While the title says IA, this Conference is really about UX.
-- dave
Posted by: David Malouf | February 07, 2007 at 05:27 PM
In a time honored tradition of quoting Maggie Breslin, I must refer you to the place I first read her inspiring note...
See Dan Saffer's post: How to teach Interaction Design
http://www.odannyboy.com/blog/new_archives/2006/04/how_to_teach_in.html
Maggie writes:
"Chad! Did you learn nothing in your time here in Pittsburgh? He wants to be an interaction designer and you gave him some articles from Cooper and uiweb?
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
You tell him I said to take a long unstructured walk around his city. Talk to strangers. Take pictures. Visit at least one museum. Pretend like he's from somewhere else for an hour. Stop in a park to read Raymond Carver's "What we talk about when we talk about love." (outloud would be rad, but I leave that up to him.) Go into a music store, find two people who seem completely different from him and buy whatever they are buying. And then end his travels at your house where he'll tell you the story of his day over a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin. The story should last as long as the bottle.
You listen to his story and then like Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" tell him all the things he already knows interaction design without even realizing it.
And to answer the question before you ask - why Bombay Sapphire Gin? Gin because it's yummy. Bombay Sapphire because it's beautiful. We're still designers after all. ;)"
Posted by: Dustin Kirk | February 14, 2007 at 04:59 PM