My Favorite Design Books

I often get asked about books to read and learn more about design, specifically product design. There isn’t the one book to read about product design, but there are a few that every aspiring designer should read. Some are more generally about ‘good design’, others more directly about the craft of product design and a few focus on innovation. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list, but it’s a good place to start for anyone wishing to understand and use design.

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
A few books on design have come out of IDEO, but this is by far the best. If you want a peek into how IDEO works, it’s a great read. If you want to learn about how the design process can be applied to solve many types of problems beyond physical products, it’s an even better book.
http://amzn.to/2dYCZZA

Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy
There is no better book about the value of empathy and customer development. Dev Patnaik, my former colleague, writes an engaging series of case studies deconstructing how empathy has helped companies like Microsoft, Nike and Harley Davidson innovate and dominate their chosen markets. But it’s more than case studies — it includes practical tips and tricks that anyone or any team can implement to improve how they create products, services and businesses that uniquely resonate with customers and win their markets.
http://amzn.to/2dQDitn

The Design of Everyday Things
A seminal book about design. Don Norman pushed the conversation about design away from surface, esthetics and beauty to function and usability. Most things not born of nature are designed by humans. These objects, symbols, structure or systems make up everyday life. He uncovers the psychology behind them and shows how they are designed either poorly or well, unintentionally or intentionally. Ideas like ‘affordances’ are concepts that I use with teams almost on a weekly basis. This is required reading for any designer or builder.
http://amzn.to/2dI8DwX

Creativity Inc.
This is one of the best books on operationalizing creativity. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, has spent his career thinking about the inputs required for great creative output. Like Pixar, product designers work at the intersection of code and creativity. It’s replete with processes and principles that you can apply to your team, organization and company to manage and unleash creativity. Always easier said than done, but reading about Pixar’s journey to becoming an animation blockbuster-producing powerhouse will inspire you to do so.
http://amzn.to/2dK1b6x

Don’t Make Me Think
The best design just gets out the way. Steve Krug has written principles for creating digital products that do just that. It has stood the test time, and I still refer others to this book as one of the few good books to read about design. It’s about more than just usability or reducing ‘cognitive overhead’ for users, which is important and easier said than done. It’s a great starting point for new designers of digital products with canonical principles for creating user experiences that are clear, easy and delightful.
http://amzn.to/2dN107M

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 Days
The team at Google Ventures has distilled the design thinking process down to a 5 day sprint and it works. It’s mostly used for digital products, but can be applied to almost any problem. While there are many methods one can use in design, Sprint does a good job at curating the most effective methods for generating many options, developing a prototype and getting customer feedback quickly, which leads to rapid results. Great process and a surprisingly entertaining read.
http://amzn.to/2dQF9ye

Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products
The best book bar none on behavior and product design. Nir does a wonderful job of distilling the latest findings from brain research about habits and applies them to product design. While most of the examples are all digital and most likely will quickly become dated, the framework for creating habit forming products is solid. Read it, internalize the framework and apply it to your product.
http://amzn.to/2dZ5T0X

Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
It’s a tome and classic, but worth wading into. Christopher Alexander and his colleagues answer fundamental questions like ‘how high and big should a window be’ by identifying over 250 patterns to consider when designing environments, homes or cities. This approach to patterns can be applied to any design problem. If you want to learn about design principles and systems thinking, this is the book to read.
http://amzn.to/2eNMa16

100 Design Principles
Design is a craft. It’s best learned by doing. Yet, there are processes, methodologies and principles to be applied in the right context. This book offers many principles long used by the best designers. It’s a great primer that can help you get unstuck or just simply jog your memory about how to potentially solve a problem.
http://amzn.to/2dI5w8j

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience
This book is written at the intersection of three movements: the Lean Startup, Agile Development and Design Thinking. It’s filled with practical advice for using design thinking in cross-functional ways to leverage ideas across product management, engineering and design.
http://amzn.to/2dF8CcN

Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
In today’s highly visual information age, it’s important to communicate ideas visually. Back of the Napkin provides a framework for structuring different kinds of ideas visually to increase clarity and comprehension. You don’t have to draw like Michelangelo to use the techniques in this book. Dan Roam shows that anyone can draw and communicate complex ideas by following basic principles that will help others understand the brilliance of your ideas. His <6><6> Rule sheet is particularly useful.
http://amzn.to/2dSfJiD

Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration
To do great design, it’s important to focus on the inputs as much as the outputs. Yes, much of design is about creating beautiful and useful things. Design is a team sport born from collaboration, creativity, and empathy. Make Space, comes from learnings at the Stanford d.School, outlines tips and tricks for creating a space that fosters collaboration, creativity and empathy
http://amzn.to/2d7Q5YL

Grid Systems in Graphic Design: A Visual Communication Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and Three Dimensional Designers
Grid Systems is a handbook originally meant for print design, but can be used for designing screens. Good grid systems establish patterns, structure information and help make digital products coherent. Use principles in this book strictly or loosely and you’ll see results.
http://amzn.to/2fhmrRn

Thinking with Type
We live in a world of screens. Much of product design is about designing information, screens and the invisible patterns behinds them. Good typography is core to making these screen-based experiences compelling. Thinking With Type is a general primer on typographic fundamentals. Read it, internalize its principles and use them in your designs. You’ll be surprised by the impact that good typography can have on your product.
http://amzn.to/2ecHmB5

Envisioning Information
Tufte is a leader in codifying the practice of information visualization and design. This book is required reading for any designer who works with information, data and visualization. Tufte’s books are beautifully designed, replete with examples that he lectures on in depth in his workshops. While the practice of information design and data visualization has evolved a lot since these books were written, most of his principles hold true today.
http://amzn.to/2myboUv

Designing News
Digital products are comprised of text, words, and images that float, animate and move around. Creating clarity and meaning through structure, hierarchy and layout are essential to organizing this information into compelling experiences. Editorial designers have been doing this for decades. Designing News distills these practices into principles that are relevant for today’s ‘screen’ designer.
http://amzn.to/2mEDaxN