Two old posts of mine from the Amnesia Blog. Great books. Quick reads.
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The Elements of User Experience
Awesome book about building usable websites. Quick and easy read. Makes A LOT of sense.
What the reviewers are saying:
“brilliant“
“invaluable“
“a must-have“
“an instant classic“
“a quantum leap in explaining user experience”
“will change the way you think about Web development”
“the best book I have read so far about creating a great user experience”
“there is probably no better book on the market that so clearly and rationally covers the entire area of user experience”
It started with a diagram: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf - the book explains how the diagram works.
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Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Being a firm believer of knowing the rules before you break them, I’m a huge fan of anyone who can explain common sense usability concisely. Among other joys it gives me ammo for explaining/defending interface designs to clients.
Reading Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability at the moment and digging it. Here’s an excerpt explaining the importance of designing with web usability in mind:
“Making pages self-evident is like having good lighting in a store: it just makes everything seem better. Using a site that doesn’t make us think about unimportant things feels effortless, whereas puzzling over things that don’t matter to us tends to sap our energy and enthusiasm – and time.”
It’s the kind of truth that’s refreshing to read. People do actually write about this stuff. And well.
If you can’t be bothered to read the book “Don’t Make Me Think”, here it is condensed into a single blog post: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/10-usability-lessons-from-steve-krug%E2%80%99s-dont-make-me-think/