The Craft of Designing a Digital Experience
Information Architecture
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things : What Categories Reveal About the Mind An important work for content architects in particular. His Metaphors We Live by is also a key work for IA's.
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web was the first book on information architecture as a discipline on the web, where it has come to fruition. Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville helped defined the job of IA as it exists in many organizations today.
Now, four years later, a second edition has appeared. It is richer, deeper, fuller and more than ever a necessity for Information Architects and Web Designers. Where the first edition was a primer on the basic concepts, this edition takes you deep into the subtle complexities of IA, while still written in an accessible voice. A single chapter, such as the introduction to search, can worth the price of the book alone.
This is a must-read. If you've got the first, you still need the second-- they are that different.
See also Boxes and Arrows interviews with Lou and Peter.
Finally got around to finishing Sorting Things Out (thanks Caltrain!) and I have mixed feelings. It is desperately boring for long stretches. And then it is seat-fixing in others. The chapter on apartheid alone deserves a double latte in borders to accompany a long peaceful read. The chapter on tuberculosis requires a double latte also-- to stay awake to read it. But overall I highly recommend it to anyone who classifies for a living. We easily forget that every act of sorting also reflects a value system that is then codified in our designs and propagated. It's a lot of responsibility.
See sample chapters
My latestest entry in the favorite slim book category is Rapid Problem Solving With Post-It Notes. While it is aimed at business types solving business problems, its application to designing content architecture is readily apparent. It's very simple, can be read in about an hour, and is a wonderful way to expand your diagramic vocabulary.
Amazon.com: Books: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web Since I'm biased, I'll let Don Norman do my talking for me. He recently wrote this blurb after reading a late draft:
"At last, a book about the technical topics of web architecture and usability that is fun to read, informative and authoritative. Wodtke's style is that of story telling which gives the book its friendly, easy to read manner, but the stories also make clear why the principles are so important. And don't let the word "Architecture" throw you. Yes, the book is about architecture, but it is a lot more. It is how to break through the creativity block, why paper and pencil can be superior to a computer, and even how to convince your fellow workers to give you an extra two weeks of time. Easy to read, good insights, practical advice: what else do you want?"
Don Norman,
Northwestern University and The Nielsen Norman Group
Author of "The Design of Everyday Things
You can also check out the book site and the book review.
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Interaction Design
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity An introduction to why software makes us batty and the fine technique of personas. The first half is a fierce and entertaining rant against current design; the second half presents an effective solution to the problem of designing technology for humans.
Follow with a chaser of About Face for understanding interface and interaction conventions from a software development point of view.
User and Task Analysis for Interface Design An important book for interaction designers. Task analysis provides a way to think attentively about all the tiny considerations it takes to complete a task, and design to assure user success at that task.
One of the books I used to dream of writing was "a pattern language for the web." Well, now I don't have to: The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience is that book.
As I first sat down to read it, I didn't care for it. But sitting down and reading it not the right use for it-- instead leave it on your desk and as you approach any standard web element, from log-in box to global navigation bar, crack it open. The authors have done a masterful job of listing the key problems each element addresses, and shows examples from several "best practices" websites. It's like having a competive analysis on your desk for almost everything. Esoteric issues, like my current interest (entire-web search) are not addressed, but pretty much all the common ones are, and insightfully. An excellent tool for any IA, Interface or Interaction Designer.
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Information Design
Information Architects 
Pretty much before there was a web, before Jakob was going to war with design, before all that hoo-haw...
There was Richard Saul Wurman saying that someone should design information in a way people could use it, and he called this person an Information Architect. Today we might call them information designers, but still.
Envisioning Information
In the arena of Information Design you cannot forget the Tufte trio (though reading the first might be enough unless you are an Information Designer). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative His books not only explain the power of graphical representaions of information to promote understanding, but also the high price of getting it wrong.
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Interface Design
About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design Alan Cooper explains the basics of user interaction design. It was written for software, but the core is completely applicable.
Michael B. Moore writes "A thin but very good primer on what makes good interfaces work. Even though they come from the Sun/X/Motif world their advice is platform neutral."
My two cents?
I have found too few good books on Interface Design that neatly combine theory and practice into a seemless learning and reference tool. Designing Visual Interfaces is special. It is often on my desk, the spine hopelessly cracked as it's been forced open to one page or another, post-its peering out along the edges. It belongs in the canon.
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User Centered Design
Contextual Design : A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs All the cool kids are reading it.
Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of UsageCentered Design (ACM Press) This is another 'everyone tells me to read it' but I haven't. So you try it. Anyone who has... send me your thoughts.
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General Thinking & Overviews
The Art & Science of Web Design Great primer on design on the web: perfect for anyone new to the medium. Jeff Veen covers aspects of web design from tech requirements through architecture to advertising online. Should be the text book for any class on web design, and provides the generalist knowledge needed for good web IA.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate I should have something insightful to say, but I don't. Buy it, read it, stay up late thinking about it.
Theory and Deep Thoughts
The Social Life of Information Okay, I haven't read it, but it's a to-do. Decide for yourself. (and if you have read it, please comment on it!)
Nicholas Paredes writes " I had recently read Abstracting Craft and think it goes really well with "the social life of information" and "interface culture." Many of the to topics are very similar to the social life of information, yet from a perspective which is more psycho than social in the psycho social spectrum. What is craft? how does it apply to computers as tools? how are the senses used? how can interfaces facilitate craft? ...
The Humane Interface By learning from cognitive science, we can gain a better understanding of how humans think, and build interfaces for them rather than for machines. Many common assumptions are challenged in this terrific and highly accessible book.
Those who deal with metadata, and trying to decide an item's true place in a hierarchy might consider Bachelard's Poetics of Space. It's a lovely (though dense) examination of physical spaces and their associations: how we shape them and then how they shape us. Moreover he looks at those elements that make a thing known as itself: what makes a corner a corner? What is the nature of nest-ness? When is a house a hut?
Sadly the Amazon excerpt doesn't do justice to this book's grace at all, and makes it look more daunting. Be brave and check it out.
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Persuasive Technology is in turns fascinating and sinister.
This book is a must for any designer working in the technology field. B.J. Fogg is clearly a upright fellow, yet the techniques he offers to persuade desired behavior are so clearly articulated that it is easy to see how they will be used for unethical ends.
Stanford professor Fogg lists many positive uses for these techniques, such as educating teens about domestic violence, or teaching diabetics to monitor their blood sugar levels, or getting RSI sufferers to stretch-- yet it's no effort to image the dark side. A later chapter on ethics does just that, showing his student's experiments in designing unethical tools, such a Pokémon game that coaxes personal information out of children and persuades them to bug their parents for toys.
That said, ignorance is not an option. We need to understand these methods, as designers and as users. I had never seen Amazon' Gold Box as more than a very silly bit of foolishness.. now I understand it for the highly crafted and effective sales tool it is.
Even if persuasion turns you off, you need this book for chapter 7, on web credibility. Check out the website for a taste. Design and information architecture are critical pieces in the struggle to differentiate a site from the vast number of personal sites and imitators sites... an increasingly difficult task for users.
When you finish this book, the hackles on your neck will rise, you'll feel lightly slimey-- but you will be a better designer and a smarter consumer.
A while back I was reading Working Knowledge in which Davenport wrote "Intuition is compressed knowledge." That phrase stuck with me as a true thing.
Now Malcolm Gladwell's new book Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking shows how right-- and how wrong-- that can be. I don't have to tell you to buy it: it's already number two on Amazon's bestsellers list (after the yet-to-be-published Harry Potter book. Someday somebody tell me how that can be so). It's a wonderful exploration of one of my favorite themes, our gut reactions, and definitely a must-buy. While the prose is not quite as elegant as The Tipping Point's, it's still a deftly written and compelling book.
It's got me thinking once again about the care and feeding of our gut. In January's HBR, they reprint Peter Drucker's classic article Managing Oneself (also available in the wonderful collection Harvard Business Review on Managing Your Career) which gives us a hint on how to make that possible...
In this article, Drucker says
"The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations. I have been practicing this method for 15 to 20 years now, and every time I do it, I am surprised. The feedback analysis showed me, for instance — and to my great surprise — that I have an intuitive understanding of technical people, whether they are engineers or accountants or market researchers. "
Although he sees it mainly as a way of getting to know himself, it is also a practice that is changing him. That "intuition" he speaks of is just "compressed experience" reinforced by his tracking practices, and by by tracking each decision, he is training his gut to become smarter and smarter.
Our metaphorical gut is like our real one. Everything we feed our gut makes us who we are. Spinach and steak, one thing. Taco Bell and Coke, another. Hemmingway and Gladwell, one thing. Spiderman and Rose Tremain, another. (before you start screaming, I read all of these).
When I want to improve my writing, the first thing I do is change my reading. When I was younger, I used to write exactly like whomever I was reading. Now my influences are varied enough that I don't unconsciously mimic voice anymore, but I do notice the level of effort rises to the quality of the materials I consume. After a week of reading the New Yorker, I'm using complete sentences once again.
Gladwell talks in Blink about how John Bargh did a set of studies in which people who took tests in which words reinforcing politeness or suggesting old age were embedded. Participants actually had their behavior changed afterwards (to the point that people exposed to old-age words actually walked more slowly, as if they were old). The implications this has on how we care for our guts are eye opening. What price are you paying for a night of American Idol?
As humans, we are naturally adaptable. We can ignore that and let the world have its way with us, or we can harness it and become our best selves.
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Usability
Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability This is how it works: If you know nothing about Usability, buy Steve Krug's book. If you know a little about usability, buy Jakob Neilsen's book on design, and buy Krug's book for your boss. If you know a fair amount about usability, buy Neilsen's book on Usability Engineering, buy Krug's book for your boss and buy Neilsen's design book for the designer sitting near you (if nothing else, it'll inspire some interesting conversations.
Oh, and if you need to explain usability to anyone, you still need Steve Krug's book. His book is sensible, funny and insightful-- even if you already know everything he's saying it's still a pleasurable read.
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Designing Web Usability Should probably be required reading for anyone who does web design. Yes Jakob is didactic, extreme and occasionally outdated. He's also insightful, inspiring and holds us all to a higher standard. Anyone working in web design today should read him, if only to decide how you relate to him.
Hand book of Usability Testing You have to run your own usability testing? Buy this book. This is the single most useful resource for writing screeners and test scripts, conducting testing to get good results and analyzing the results.
I bought this book at an amazingly large used bookstore down in Palo Alto called "Book Buyers" (next to Printer's Ink), and got to read it over my flight to and from Portland.
Design by People for People is a terrific little book full of useful gems for people faced with the questions that arise from regular usability testing: how many participants, when to intervene in a usability test, effective think-aloud methods. However this book is written in such a straightforward and engaging manner, it's far less painful than digging through academic screeds.
It also looks at consulting issues (not to be missed -- Rubin's essay on Authentic Consulting) and even experience design.
It's not a book for you if you have never done usability testing before.. Rubin’s Handbook is better for that. But if you want to refine your skills, definitely check it out.
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Design
Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works a great and visually lush explanation of the importance of type. If you've ever felt that times and arial are enough as font choices, read this.
If you hunger for more knowledge on type, The Elements of Typographic Style will be next on your list.
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Tibor changed the way I think about design. Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist is beautiful, playful and revolutionary. From his work with Talking Heads to his magazine "colors" his designs were insightful and relentlessly original.... If you are on a budget consider Design and Undesign, a thinner and cheaper Tibor for those seeking a "lite" survey of his work. Salon Article on his life and SFMOMA Exhibit
Logos: The Development of Visual Symbols Through the story of one very smart designer creating a logo for one very particular client, the author manages to cover how to handle client relations, how to keep creative juices flowing, how to move through a structured design process, and what a logo needs to do to be successful-- all without losing the narrative flow of the core story.
Soak Wash Rinse Spin: Tolleson Design is stunning. I just open it and I start to drool. Each line has purpose, meaning and elegance. This is "big d" design, and IA's and designs can learn equally from it. You may never ask if it's possible to be beautiful and usable again...
Check out this new book from Curt Cloninger, Fresh Styles. An expansion of his terrific article Eyecandy from the Underground, the book showscases several distinctive home-grown web styles. It then goes through them one by one, deconstructs each, looks at comercial applications of each, then adds a few tips on how to "get that look."
I've long enjoyed his writing at ALISTAPART.com, especially the infamous "Usability Experts are From Mars, Graphic Designers are From Venus." He's articulate and lively, funny and straightforward-- kind of a steve krug if he was a designer. Fresh Styles is a great wake-up call for any designer whining for print, or anyone trying to design who can't quite break through a creative block... and its fun for kids like me who just like to dream of better design.
tasty stuff.
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Oh those delightful and decadent Swiss. Swiss Graphic Design is eye-candy on a high level. You become better at design just flipping through the pages, and I doubt you will flip through more than ten before you drop the book to pick up a pencil.
The book I'm foisting on my team these days is Paula Scher's Make It Bigger. Make It Bigger is immediately appealing with its odd shape, powerful use of type and wooden cover. Cracking it open, you discover Ms. Scher designed much of the imagery from the 70's-80's that you might recall, from the dubious distinction of Boston's "spaceship" cover, to the endlessly copied "Bring on the Noise, Bring on the funk" poster, to the controversial and eventually canonized Swatch-swiss poster parody. Flipping through the book it is clear the power one designer can have over how the world looks.
But more interesting to me, and the reason I keep making my designers read it, is her approaches to dealing with clients and her concept of "selling down." (poor screen shot here of one of the many wonderful diagrams she users to explain how sign-off processes work--btw, the screenshots amazon chooses to show are just appalling-- here is a book full of gorgeous colorful design and they choose a few text heavy pages? What up?). Having started her career making a design, having the assistant art director suggest changes, the art director suggest to changes, the creative directory suggest changes, the product manager suggest changes, the VP of sales make changes.. she realized she had to make changes to how she presented her designs.
The title itself -- Make It Bigger-- refers to Paula's endless battle to help clients be able to see the design clearly, and accept it without the layers of hierarchy pissing on it (my words, not hers). By end running the hierarchy and then selling down rather than up, she is able to avoid watered-down design arriving for final approval.
All of us have heard those words-- Make It Bigger, Make It Red, Put It On Top. But only a few have learned how to deal with it. In these days of designer disillusionment and rising struggle to make our work count again, Paul's book comes at just the right time. The work quickly dismisses the idea that design is irrelevant while the text and diagrams give young designers the tools they need to navigate political waters.
permalink | 5 Comments | Mail this EntryCan a book be deeply flawed and still be worth having? The Origin of Things delights and disappoints with every page. The book consists of a collection of design objects across the years, along with the sketches and related items used to achieve their final design, and the images are fascinating. The lowly paperclip is photographed as lovingly as the Frank Lloyd Wright vase, giving the paperclip the warhol-icon treatment and revealing its inherent beauty.
The text, however, fails the magnificent objects. It's often incomplete, obtuse, or dry. The result is a tease that either makes you hunger for more, or mystifies, leaving you alone to decifer the drawings and results. Sometimes reading a dry but more complete text, one sense a thrilling story behind the design process-- such as with Wim Gilles scooterette project, in which he fought to do a personal project to build a lightweight folding scooter/moped that got to final prototype then was killed preproduction-- but the story doesn't keep up with the photographs. Not bad, but unsatisfying.
However, I've really enjoyed the book, no matter how disappointed I've been with an incomplete story, because it is so neat to look at beautiful, well crafted objects and their creation artifacts: the prototype kettle made of two pans soldered together, the x-rays that informed a silverware set, the raw and elegant drawings that became Lloyd Wright's vases.
Decide for yourself.
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Brand
Building Strong Brands Brand, Like IA is a hard to define field and absolutely essential to a web-businesses success (to any business's success) This book explains brand in a language that anyone can understand without talking down to anyone. Truly a book for novices and experts, and that's a rare distinction. Don't trust me, have a taste.
Corporate Identity: Making Business Strategy Visible Through Design I asked the best brand strategist I've ever met which book to read and she pointed me to this one. Lots of amazing illustrations, lots of great insights on brand beyond business. Definitely a great introductory text.
Marks of Excellence is outstanding resource for anyone seeking to understand the language of logos. It's huge, lavishly illustrated and well explained, and covers logos from their early beginnings in heraldry to modern fashions. YUM!
The Art of Branding is a simple slim book full of pictures and graphs that explains Brand creation and management by examining the life of Picasso, and along the way makes a convincing argument that Picasso was the master of his own brand. Recommended for the ideas, the graphs and photos, and the masterful simplicity.
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Architecture
How Buildings Learn :What Happens After They're Built is is truly amazing. Each page connects form with use, use over time, and the dangers of overspecialized shapes. Lots of relevancy to webdesign, as well as product design and anything humans have to use.
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Technology & Software Development
Design Patterns Ed Q. Briges writes: "although it's probably more technical than most info-architects may be interested in, the "Gang of Four" book is tremendously influential in current software architecture and design circles. In turn influenced by Christopher Alexander's notions about architecture and designing habitable spaces. After all, coders "live" in the code they're -- more often than not -- maintaining. and, the experience of dealing with poorly written software (both for a coder and a user), is not unlike trying to make sense out of a badly designed building or public space. The book itself is very usefully designed, being a highly structured catalog of patterns."
Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of UsageCentered Design (ACM Press) This is another 'everyone tells me to read it' but I haven't. So you try it. Anyone who has... send me your thoughts.
Large parts of Bringing Design to Software are available online. Have a taste of this seminal book, especially the interview on the conceptual model and the chapter on "Keepign it simple" then trot off to your local independant bookseller, or to amazon
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Understanding Comics I know few IA's who haven't read and dug this book... unsurprising once you realize this is an intriguing meditation on the visual presentation of information... er... stories. Tasty. The companion volume Reinventing Comics is a good exploration on taking comics to the next level --online-- while keeping their core nature intact.
Visit his site and read his chess piece.
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones : A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings (Shambhala Pocket Classics) Okay, ignoring the issue of "are IA's interested in Zen" I'd like to point out this small book is a model of great design through koans and through exercises... talk about tailoring an interface to different kinds of learning! Plus this edition is small enough for all pockets.
If on a Winters Night a Traveler and The Mezzanine are both works of fiction in which the format and structure of the book is as important to the story as the compelling and wonderfully crafted fiction inside. Both a compelling read and an education on reinventing form.
This morning I found my Sandman Companion still open to the page I was on when I left 7 weeks ago (that is a true sign of marital respect, folks. As well as of geekiness on my part.) And Neil Gaimen is saying that he learned in World's End that some stories can't be told in 24 pages. And it made me think of his novels, such as Anasi Boys, which at 416 pages could hardly be called a short book-- except it is. I read it in a couple days. Compare with the truely amazing and terrific Middlesex, weighing in at 544 pages. If I hadn't looked up the two, I would have sworn Anasi Boys was 250-300 pages, and Middlesex was 800.
Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed both of these books, and I would recommend you go buy both, as well as American Gods and Virgin Suicides (their other marvelous books). But I find it odd that at a mere 100 pages more, Middlesex feels like I read two or three books, and that lives were changed in the process. Anasi Boys could have been a graphic novel. I feel like I've ordered desert with my husband and he's ordered a souffle and I a flourless chocolate torte can I can't figure out why he's finished his and is now starting to work on mine. Middlesex is dense. But not dense like Chauser, it's very easy and pleasureable to read. It's just the Gaimen book feels like someone has beaten air into it for 20 minutes, like you see on a cooking show.
Neither has filler, neither has useless scenes, neither is written in a overly formal or inaccesable style. So why the difference? What makes a "fast read" a fast read?
Oh, and one more time, go buy Middlesex, best book I've read since Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, which was easiely the best book I'd read in years....
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You are here. (where is here?)
This is the complete listing of all the books I've added to the list so far. Enjoy.
They are losely grouped into four categories, with subcategories within.
