Gifts for the Naughty & Nice UXer in Your Life

If you are like us, there is pretty much one thing on your mind this time of year. No, we aren’t talking about Santa. No, we also aren’t talking about the latest Star Wars movie. We are talking about books. Lovely books filled with information and beautiful designs. We have a not-so-secret addiction to the written word and we want to support the other UXers out there who also want UX books under the <insert your symbol of winter solace here>.

This year what we’ve done is pair an item (or a set of items) a UXer might want with a book we would recommend to go with it. Then, because we are all a bit naughty, we’ve paired books that we don’t want with things that no UXer should receive. Enjoy & Merry Tidings from Laurian & Meg.

Gifts for the Nice UXer

A Sketcher’s Delight

I don’t know a single UX person who has turned down some great sketching materials. It is like sunshine on a beach, you can never get enough. My favorite sketch pad is the Behance Dot Grid book. Here is why I love it. The pages are large, giving you a big canvas to start thinking grandly. The dots on the page really help for those of us who want to plan what we are placing but aren’t so great at placing them exactly. You can also tear the pages out easily if you end up wanting to put something on the wall or scan it to send it somewhere. Pair that amazing notebook with some of the stencils from UI Stencils, and you have one happy UX Person who is drawing herself to one beautiful well-thought-out design.

Paired with implements of drawing delight we can recommend Sketching User Experiences. This is a great book brought to us from Bill Buxton. It covers how sketching early on ends up creating a better product and happier users. While the isn’t the most mind bending read, what this book does well is really solidify why sketching is important. Whenever I’m designing I try to think up at least three ways that I can solve the same problem and I sketch them out with some arrows to potential workflow items to consider. Even though I know I’m going to throw two of the sketches away before I start wireframing, the early sketching influences the eventual design. This book highlights some methods to sketching and also the research behind why it is important.

Methods make the (Wo)Man

It isn’t always clear how to tackle a problem, because not every problem can be solved with a new flashy website. Sometimes you really have to listen to your users to figure out how best to solve their problems. When trying to tackle a really difficult problem I’ve always wished I had the the IDEO Methods deck of cards. Not only are they beautiful (I’ve seen a deck) but they are thoughtfully created and useful for stirring up stagnant thinking. Sure, they are $50, but it is a gift worth giving.

These cards are well paired with Designing Interactions, which is a series of case studies on some of the most pivotal designs to date. Also from IDEO, it is a beautiful book and it shows that there is much more to UX than creating a website. I was able to see Bill Moogridge speak at a conference a number of years ago when this book was first published. The passion he had for understanding the history, but also the multidisciplinary nature of design was fascinating. This book reflects his mindset and is well worth a read.

Getting Work Done

Every UX designer we know has some complex system of note cards, post-its, calendars, or journals for managing their ever expanding list of projects. Help your favorite UXer manage the chaos by giving them the Emergent Task Planner. An amazing friend showed me these and I’ve been grateful ever since. If you are split across projects, clients, and billing codes, these are a lifesaver. As you are on the run you can easily track how much time you are spending by jotting what you are actually accomplishing each day. Additionally, the Emergent Task Planner asks you to think of only three goals you can accomplish in a single day — so it keeps you focused. I like these as stickies because I just plop one in my notebook each morning. Then in the evening after I’m done filling out my timecard I ball it up and throw it away.

You can pair this gift with Design is a Job, a book Meg wrote a review about a few weeks ago. This book is a must-read for any designer that wants to be better at selling their work, managing clients, and coming across as a total professional. Check out the review for more information.

A Bag to Carry It All

What gift would be complete without some totally eccentric bag to put it all in. Redland in London just came out with a whole series of bags that match the Pantone color of your dreams. If you saw me right now you’d see that I’m sporting my own chromostereopsis inducing red and blue dress with a red cardigan. Of course I’m eyeing that Tango Red Large Backpack!

What goes well with a bag to put all your beautiful books in? How about a book that does a good job of summarizing the field of UX. My favorite book to recommend to new people joining the field of UX is Interaction Design. I have yet to find a better book that summarizes all the different aspects of UX and the science behind each part. The book is reasonably chunked into sections, has great examples, and is written to the right audience.

Gifts for the Naughty UXer

Redundancy

You know what no UX person wants? Another pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a mug filled with artisanal coffee beans. Seriously… that picture wasn’t even hard to find. You know why? Because they already have one. And they think that their glasses and coffee mug is already the best thing since Apple’s one-button mouse.

You know what book goes with another pair of glasses and coffee? Another copy of the Design of Everyday Things. Everyone already has a copy. I’m not going to lie. I have three. I have one from when the book used to be called ‘The Psychology of Everyday Things.’ I have my first copy that I read like a college student hopped up on too much coffee. And then I have a copy that I bought for someone but they already had a copy. I have yet to find someone to give it to that doesn’t already own it. I don’t even really have a good excuse for having three copies. Don Norman is somewhere drinking artisinal coffee spiked with the proceeds of selling this stupid UXer the same book three times. He wins. Any UX person you try to give this book to is not winning.

Stats

When I think of the delight of a winter morning, sipping tea and cuddling my small human-shaped monsters (aka. my kids) what I really don’t want to be thinking about is statistics. That is why this winter we recommend that you not purchase a copy of SPSS, a statistics modeling software. My husband asked why not just tell people about R? After all, it is open source? Well, my sweetie, it is because SPSS comes with a whole community of social scientists that have been using it for ages. But sure, go ahead and put R on a USB keyring and Masil Tov!

There is something about statistics software that not only takes a bit of your soul and refuses to return it, but it crushes the winter spirit. Somehow doing a linear regression really takes the festive out of the festivities.

Paired with not buying SPSS we have to recommend a book we recently reviewed: How to Lie with Statistics. As we wrote in the blog post this book is foundational and useful, but if there is a choice of any other book and this book you should pick the other book. Statistics and learning about statistics really doesn’t make anyone’s heart grow bigger.

Save these winners for Valentines! After all, nothing says ‘i love you’ like a t-test to show statistical difference in ratings of happiness between before and after you met.

Marketing

There are some days when I think that if one more person talks to me about social media, SEO, or “going viral” I’m going to lose my shit. I know that marketing and UX are, presumably, on the same team, but some days it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like marketing wants to take every deep thought and careful consideration that went into a design and turn them into soul-killing, sellable campaigns. So if you really intensely dislike a certain UXer, but you feel obligated to get them a gift, you’ll be guaranteed to get in their craw by buying them Do It! Marketing: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Boost Sales, Maximize Profits, and Crush Your Competition. And if you really want to ensure that they know you hate them, you can pair that book with this lovely twitter handle necklace. In your card you can say you want to help them keep social media close to their heart.