Books for usability-centric interactive designers
December 16, 2007 by iclazie
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.
