Three Good Design Books I’ve Recently Read
that I would recommend to you if you like design books
Designers Don’t Read by Austin Howe
Designers Don’t Read is a collection of 41 essays written by Austin Howe. Each essay is prefaced by the amount of time expected to read it, ranging from 0.5 minutes to 9.5 minutes. The back of the book indicates the total read time as 3 hours and 1 minute. In the first essay, titled If Designers Don’t Read, Why Did I Spend a Year Writing this Book?, the author explains that his essays started out as a series of essays that he would write in his free time to email to his design friends. This book is insightful and fun to read, but its most appealing quality, in my opinion, is the fact that you don’t have to invest a significant amount of time per reading session. As most of the essays stand alone, it’s easy to pick up during a short break between other tasks.
Cad Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies, and T-Shaped People: Inside the World of Design Thinking and How it Can Spark Creativity and Innovation by Warren Berger
This book contains nearly 300 pages dedicated to thoughtful writing on the concept of design thinking without ever resorting to those colorful infographics with all of the arrows that we’ve all probably seen enough of. I believe this book's greatest strength is that a reader could know next to nothing about design and come away from reading it with a knowledge of dozens of the most important designers from the last fifty years, the innovative design solutions they arrived at, and the thinking/processes behind the formation of those solutions. Throughout these case studies, the author paints a clear picture of the importance of diving deep into problems, by exercising empathy and conducting research, in forming innovative design solutions.
The Best Interface is No Interface by Golden Krishna
Throughout this book, Golden Krishna forms a compelling argument for abandoning reliance on graphical user interfaces in design solutions. He suggests that we have a tendency to assume that a screen-based interface is a solution before we fully evaluate the most efficient way for a user to accomplish their goal. My favorite example from the book includes the idea of unlocking a car door. The author lays out 13 steps a user would take in using a mobile app to unlock their car door. He follows by suggesting the replacement of the mobile app with sensors and transmitters; thus, reducing the process to two steps: approaching the car and opening the door. The book is written in a tone that is sarcastic and often hilarious, but an extremely important point is made: we should not default to a screen based interface without determining if another solution would provide a more efficient path for users to accomplish their goals.
