The Design of Everyday Things

Two of the best books for software engineers are actually not specific to software engineering: * “The Design of Everyday Things”. Have you ever pushed on a pull door, or vice-versa, because it was unclear how it worked? Designers call those doors “Norman Doors”, now, after the author of this book Donald Norman so effectively dissected and criticized them (among plenty other objects). Too many APIs suffer similar problems—and if you don’t want yours to, this book is a great place to start. * “On Writing Well”, by William Zinsser. Good code and good prose have a lot in common: they know what they’re trying to do, are stripped to their clearest components, and have internal structure that supports understanding. Add to that the fact you’ll be writing lots of prose anyway (design docs, postmortems, etc), and the value of writing well should be clear.

Just want to add vote for Design of Everyday Things. If you are into creating anything that other people use (software, code, appliances, doors), you should read this book.

Thumbs up Design of Everyday Things! I had a class with Donald Norman when I was in college because he was the head of my department. I thought I was going to go into research at that time because I worked in a lab. Later when I was a video game designer I realized that was probably the most useful class I ever took.

"The design of everyday things" would be the book to read about that kind of stuff. It's a classic and very good, I would consider that a possible "minimum"

Try to learn and understand design as a discipline before going into the specifics of user interfaces and interaction design. For that I recommend: - Universal Principles of Design - William Lidwell - The Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman Then for more practical knowledge: - Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability - Caroline Jarrett - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - Steve Krug - Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web & Mobile Application Design - Robert Hoekman Jr. - Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design - Bill Buxton

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csik... (http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432) The Design of Everyday Things http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d... (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0385267746)

Since Don't Make Me Think already came up, going to add About Face (have 2.0 but heard 3.0 is even better) http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Desi... (http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220626879&sr=8-1) and Design of Everyday Things http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d... (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220626908&sr=1-1)

On my desk: Getting Real (37Signals), Hardball (Chris Mathews), Prioritizing Web Usability (Jakob Nielsen) Nearby shelf: The Design of Everyday Things, Maverick, Founders at work, A Brief History of Time, A Pattern Language, Peopleware, Made to stick, Web Standards Solutions, Designing Interactions, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man-Month, Oh, the Places You'll Go! Other good reads: Blink, Tipping Point, Long Tail, Freakonomics