Books
20 posts tagged.
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Design research books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This is the last and shortest list on the shelf, the one on design research as a practice. Norman Potter’s What is a designer and Models and Constructs are the two books that deserve to be read more than they are, compact, sharp and more relevant to design education than most larger textbooks. Brenda Laurel’s Design Research: Methods and Perspectives is the practical anthology. Miller & Lupton’s Design Writing Research is the critical and editorial companion, how design thinking becomes design writing. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Norman Potter. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Norman Potter. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Brenda Laurel Ed. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Abbott Miller, Ellen Lupton. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jessica Helfand. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Interaction design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This is the interaction design shelf itself, and the one where I’ve annotated most of the entries in the original post. Jef Raskin’s The Humane Interface is the one absolutely essential book on this shelf; read it first, and read it more than once. Alan Cooper’s The Inmates Are Running the Asylum is the polemical companion. Lucy Suchman’s Plans and Situated Actions is the theoretical counterpoint, an anthropologist’s argument that interaction is situated in context, not specified in plans. Bergman’s Information Appliances and Beyond is the best case-study collection I know. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Pink = highly recommended! Eric Bergman ed. One of the best interaction design books to date. With case-studies on various design problems from Palm OS usability to Nokia contextual design issues. Just enough detail and anecdotes to get a good sense of design process. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jef Raskin. An absolutely essential book for anyone developing an interactive product.
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Adaptive design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is on adaptive design: emergence, pattern languages, the design of things that learn or evolve, and the classics on how cities and communities organise themselves. Christopher Alexander is the spine of this shelf, from Notes on the Synthesis of Form through A Pattern Language to The Nature of Order. Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn is the architectural companion. Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities is the urban-planning foundation. Steven Johnson’s Emergence and Mitchel Resnick’s Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams are the approachable modern introductions to complex adaptive systems. Rheingold’s Smart Mobs is the early-2000s prediction of networked collective behaviour that mostly came true. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Christopher Alexander. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Christopher Alexander. amazon.com Christopher Alexander. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Christopher Alexander. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Architecture theory books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. Architecture is the parent discipline of a lot of interaction design thinking, and this list is the shelf I was reading on the theory side: space, the city, urbanism, and the politics of the built environment. Calvino’s Invisible Cities is the book I keep giving to people. Bachelard’s Poetics of Space is the phenomenological counterpart, both are worth reading slowly. Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture and Disjunction and Manhattan Transcripts are the most polemical of the theoretical books. William J. Mitchell’s City of Bits and E-topia are the early digital-urbanism texts that most directly speak to interaction designers working on networked spaces. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. M. Christine Boyer. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Nick Barley. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Manuel Gausa. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Norman Foster. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Le Corbusier. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Bernard Tschumi. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Bernard Tschumi. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com William J. Mitchell. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Design management books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is the shortest on the shelf and the most practical, the books on managing design projects, gathering requirements and running workflows. The Robertsons’ Mastering the Requirements Process is the standard reference on requirements gathering. Karl Wiegers’s Software Requirements is the software-engineering equivalent. Goto & Cotler’s Web Redesign is of its moment but it was the manual every web-design studio had on a shelf in 2003. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Suzanne Robertson, James Robertson. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Karl E. Wiegers. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jessica Burdman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Kelly Goto, Emily Cotler. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Steve McConnell. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Information design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. This one is on information design: the discipline of making quantitative and complex information legible. Tufte’s three books (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations) are the canonical shelf. But Paul Mijksenaar’s Visual Function is the better first book: smaller, polemical, full of examples, and it prepares you to read Tufte critically rather than as scripture. Colin Ware’s Information Visualization is the scientific companion. Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics is the essential ethical counterpart, a reminder that information design can mislead as easily as it can clarify. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Paul Mijksenaar. A small, beautiful and polemical book full of fine examples of good information design, read this before tackling Tufte. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Edward Tufte. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Usability books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. This one is on usability, the discipline that gave interaction design its empirical grounding. Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things is the foundational book, and still the one to read first. Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think is the approachable practitioner’s companion. Beyer & Holtzblatt’s Contextual Design is the canonical research-methods book, the one that taught a generation of designers how to watch users in their actual contexts. Nielsen is the dominant figure of the era, for better and worse; both his books are worth knowing even where you disagree. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Donald Norman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Donald Norman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Douglas K. Van Duyne, James Landay, Jason I. Hong. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com John Cato. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Game design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is on game design, a discipline with a lot to teach interaction designers about engagement, feedback and the design of systems people come back to. Salen & Zimmerman’s Rules of Play is the canonical theoretical text; it did for game design what Bordwell & Thompson did for film. Steven Poole’s Trigger Happy is a cultural rather than technical take, and one of the better-written books on games. Lucien King’s Game On was the Barbican’s 2002 exhibition catalogue, still a useful visual and historical overview. The rest are practical manuals from the pre-indie era of game development. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Bob Bates. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Andrew Rollings, Ernest Adams. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Andrew Rollings, Dave Morris. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Lucien King. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Liz Faber. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jaro Gielens, Robert Klanten. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Steven Poole. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Experience design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is on experience design itself, the books that were building the vocabulary for the field at the time. Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience is still the clearest practitioner’s framework. Dewey’s Art as Experience from the 1930s is the philosophical foundation; the chapter called ‘What is an experience’ is worth reading on its own. Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow is the psychological counterpart. James Cousins’s British Rail Design, out of print, is a fascinating case study of integrated experience design across every touchpoint of a service, from seat-fabric to signage. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Jesse James Garrett. This small book succinctly and professionally explains the entire user-experience field. Every page has some insight to offer; from user-centred strategy to visual branding and graphics. For more information see jjg.net . amazon.co.uk / amazon.com John Dewey. A classic book written in the 1930s.
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Visual design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. This one is visual design: grid systems, typography of form, colour theory, graphic design history, and the design-annual/showcase books that were the web’s main way of keeping track of itself before Flickr and RSS. Some of these are still essential (Muller-Brockmann, Itten, Albers, Rand, Pevsner). Some are of their moment (Reload: Browser 2.0 is a time capsule of early web design). The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Josef Muller-Brockmann. Magma Books / Niggli / UK booksearch Donis A. Dondis. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Steven Heller, Elinor Pettit. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Philip Meggs. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Nikolaus Pevsner. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Steven Heller. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Steven Heller. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Paul Rand. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Paul Rand. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jost Hochuli, Robin Kinross. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Broadcast design books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is on motion graphics and broadcast design, a parallel craft I’d been working in, and one that feeds directly into time-based interaction work. Richard Williams’s The Animator’s Survival Kit is the single essential craft book on the shelf, worth more than all the others combined. Bellantoni & Woolman’s Type in Motion is the theoretical book I kept returning to. The Meyers’ After Effects books were the practical manuals of the era; much of their content is now superseded. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Julie Hirschfeld, Stefanie Barth ed. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Robert Klanten, Hendrik Hellige, Birga Meyer. Includes 4 ½ hours of motion graphics work on DVD, but the book itself is disappointing. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jeff Bellantoni, Matt Woolman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Paul Wells. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jayne Pilling. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Richard Williams. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Trish Meyer, Chris Meyer. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Trish Meyer, Chris Meyer. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Brand and communication books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is on brand and communication: identity systems, the commercial and political arguments around branding, and strategic brand management. Klein’s No Logo is the political counterweight to everything else on this shelf. Wally Olins’s The Guide to Identity is the canonical practitioner’s text on identity systems; he co-wrote the third title here too. Jane Pavitt’s Brand New was the V&A’s Brand New catalogue, a visual overview of what corporate identity looked like at the turn of the millennium. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Naomi Klein. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Wally Olins. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Cees van Riel, Wally Olins. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jane Pavitt ed. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jean-Noel Kapferer. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Hamish Pringle, William Gordon. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Typography books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. This one is on typography, the deepest and oldest of the design disciplines, and still the one most interaction designers would benefit from reading into properly. Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style is the canonical reference. Robin Kinross’s Unjustified Text and his book on Karel Martens are the most useful English-language writing on typography as a critical practice. Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep is where to start if you’ve never thought about typefaces. Fred Smeijers’s Counterpunch is the book on punchcutting, the craft under the craft. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Phil Baines. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Harry Carter. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Robin Kinross. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Robin Kinross, Karel Martens, Jaap van Triest. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Fred Smeijers. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Business and strategy books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is short: the business and strategy books I was reading to understand where design sits in the wider commercial conversation. Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma is the single most useful book here. The Experience Economy by Pine & Gilmore is the strategic framing most relevant to experience design; it made the argument that experience itself is the product. The rest are either IDEO-perspective (Kelley) or of their moment (the Dream Society and Experiential Marketing). The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Tom Kelley. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Clayton M. Christensen. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Rolf Jensen. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com B. Joseph Pine. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Bernd H. Schmitt. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Technical books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is the shortest, and the most time-stamped: the technical books I was reading when web standards, CSS and accessibility were still being argued over. Much of this has since become second nature or been superseded, but at the time these were the books shaping the craft. Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards is the generational text of that moment, the book that made the case for separating structure from presentation and won the argument. Eric Meyer on CSS and Håkon Wium Lie’s book on CSS1 are the practical and theoretical companions. Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites is the conscience of the shelf. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Jeffrey Zeldman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jeffrey Zeldman. A fantastic how-to book for designers looking to get involved in web publishing and design. Takes the reader through writing, usability, architecture and technical tips. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Eric Meyer. One of the leading proponents and practitioners of css on the web explains his ideas and techniques. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Film books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. Film has always been a neighbouring discipline, and this list is about the craft: directing, editing, sound, screenwriting, the architecture of the frame. Bordwell & Thompson’s Film Art is the textbook every interaction designer should also read: how scenes work, how cuts work, how attention works. Tarkovsky’s Sculpting In Time and Kieslowski on Kieslowski are the directors’ own accounts of their thinking. Michel Chion’s Audio Vision is the essential book on sound-image relationships; I keep returning to it. Lumet’s Making Movies is the working director’s how-to. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson. Classic textbook, required reading. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Andrey Tarkovsky. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Andrey Tarkovsky. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Danusia Stok, Krzysztof Kieslowski. A thorough insight into Kieslowski’s process, thinking and ideology. Wonderful. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Philip Parker. Essential reading for screenwriting, not just the usual Hollywood basics. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Photography books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. Photography has always run parallel to my design practice, and this list is the shelf I was building then: theory, practice, and the monographs I was learning from. Berger’s two books, Ways of Seeing and Another Way of Telling (the latter with Jean Mohr), are the essential reading. Mitchell’s The Reconfigured Eye is the clearest book on what photography became when it went digital. Hockney’s Cameraworks is the photographer’s-eye-view on composite image-making. The rest are monographs I was returning to: Graham, Gursky, Shulman on Modernism. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. John Berger, Jean Mohr. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com John Berger. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com William J. Mitchell. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Fred Ritchin. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Paul Graham, Andrew Wilson. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Marie Luise Syring et al. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Pierluigi Serraino, Julius Shulman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com David Hockney. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Fabian Monheim. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Media theory books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. This one is media theory: how new media remakes old assumptions, the politics of the networked commons, and the relationships between people, computers and media. Manovich’s Language of New Media is the canonical starting point. Lessig’s The Future of Ideas is the political counterpart. Reeves & Nass’s The Media Equation is the one that stays with you, a readable empirical argument that we treat machines socially whether we mean to or not. Paul Taylor’s Hackers sits slightly to one side of the others; it’s the best academic treatment of hacker culture I know. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Lev Manovich. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Hubert Dreyfus. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Lawrence Lessig. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Paul Taylor. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com An extraordinary insight into hacker culture – academically rigorous but very readable and entertaining.
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Narrative books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design. This one is on narrative: interactive storytelling, theatre as a model for interaction, story structure, and the sequential-art tradition of comics. Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck and Brenda Laurel’s Computers As Theatre are the two foundational texts that frame interaction design as a narrative practice. Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the story-structure canon. And Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, along with Eisner’s books, are among the most useful things an interaction designer can read, more practical than most HCI books for thinking about pacing, framing, and the relationship between words and images. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Janet H Murray. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Mark Stephen Meadows. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Brenda Laurel. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Joseph Campbell. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Jeff Wirth. amazon.com by Roger C. Schank, Gary Saul Morson. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Scott McCloud. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Will Eisner. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com
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Information architecture books
This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. This one is on information architecture: structuring and navigating information systems, the taxonomies and classifications behind them, and the wider theories of how information gets organised and shared. Rosenfeld & Morville’s book is the canonical introduction and still the best place to start. Bowker & Star’s Sorting Things Out is the essential theoretical counterpoint, a sociology of classification that any working IA practitioner should know. Brown & Duguid and Svenonius broaden it further into the social and philosophical foundations of information. The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy. Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville. Now in its second edition, undoubtedly the best introduction to IA. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Richard Saul Wurman. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Eric L. Reiss. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com Christina Wodtke. amazon.co.uk / amazon.com