Books for Beginner UX/Designers
Do you want to become a UX, Product designer or any other fancy design title? Looking to level up your UI designer skills with some Human Centered design thinking? Or do you just want to know what this UX fuzz is all about?
Here are MY TOP book recommendations for anyone starting out in UX design!
The Design of Everyday Things
Focus: Design-Language Fundamentals
This is the classic book by Don Norman that has shapes both the physical and digital design worlds. Explaining how design works in showing how different objects are supposed to be used just by their shape. If an object breaks common design pattern, we get confused on how to use it and this can lead to interaction misstakes.
Read the full Review: https://medium.com/user-experience-design-1/i-read-4-popular-design-books-here-are-my-thoughts-675a106b87ef
100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People
Focus: User Behaviour
This book goes through all the basics of how the brain works, how social behaviors effect users and how they might percive your product design. With 100 gems that give you the best knowledge on how the brain works, what drives us all and social factors that effect our behavior.
Read the full Review: https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/reviewing-4-popular-design-books-part-4-6a66cb3c21da
The Elements of User Experience
Focus: UX overview
A great starting book to learn about all levels of UX design. Breaking down all aprects of UX; from the Abstract level of stradegy with product objectives and user needs, to the Concrete level with interface design, navigation and sensory design.
Read the full Review: Coming soon
This free read also details the 5 layers of UX described in the book: https://www.uxdesigninstitute.com/blog/5-elements-of-ux-design/
Don’t Make Me Think
Focus: Practical UI Design
Psychology & UI rules: how it works together in designing digital products. This gives you good basics of UI guidelines and many practical tips that can be used in any design. The book also discusses why usability as something everyone in the team should think about.
Read the full Review: https://medium.com/user-experience-design-1/i-read-4-popular-design-books-here-are-my-thoughts-675a106b87ef
Digital Compassion
Focus: Accessability
Technology should be designed for everyone! This small book will give you an introduction to start thinking about the importance of designing with inclusion in mind. It should not be a afterthought where we throw in some accessability design in the end. Accessable design (compassion) should be baked into your design from the start!
Read the full Review: https://medium.com/user-experience-design-1/i-read-3-ux-game-design-books-here-are-my-thoughts-ca471d62b11a
Design For How People Think
Focus: User Phsychology Overview
Design is not just what we want users to do. The field of Design has many layers of Cognative science and historical design patterns that we need to be aware of to create products that are truly easy & simple to use. The book is framed around a ‘6 Minds Framework’, which are the areas that design is used to communicate & influences users.
Read the full Review: https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/reviewing-ux-design-books-part-6-9f230d95fddd
📚 Free Digital Readings!
1. Coglode Research
Website: https://www.coglode.com/research
Bite-size behavioural insights with psychological tricks you can add into your design to make products more usables, motivational and inspiring to nudge players to like and use your products more.
2. Laws of UX
Website: https://lawsofux.com/
This webside will give you lots of helpful guidelines to practical and useful ‘rules’ of design and practical guides for UI.
3. Google Material Design
Website: https://material.io/design/introduction
Google has created a great free library of great UI practices that they use to make sure that digital products all follow coherent design rules. Knowing best practices in UI design helps you in you’re UX design.
📚 Do you want more books on a higher skill level?
Check out my book list for Beginner UX/Designers: https://medium.com/@annawikstrom/books-for-experienced-ux-designers-223a8e014043
❤️ Thank you for reading!
Did you already read these books and want to reach the next level of UX Design?
I regularly review different types of design books and write about them here on Medium!
