Featured Books

Harri Oinas-Kukkonen & Henry Oinas-Kukkonen: Humanizing the Web – Change and Social Innovation

The authors describe how the Web is transforming from a one-way information delivery channel to a socially rich communication vehicle, resulting in the humanizing of the Web and fulfilling the Web's original promise. They explain how the Web continues to change businesses, software design, the way we perceive people and the skills required of us. The Web's key challenges are defined as six paradoxes and its role as an innovation ecosystem is introduced, emphasizing the consideration of the social Web as a software platform, user experience, and business ecosystem.

The volume explores the challenges related to the search for Zero-to-One innovations, breakthroughs, and the key strategies for discovering these kinds of innovations for the social Web (or through the social Web for non-Web environments). It also envisions the next generation of the Web, including both transformations that are already ongoing and visible as well as new expectations.

An important message for companies and organizations is to adopt a set of core business values that will facilitate innovation processes in this future humanized Web. These business values are very humane. Finally, the authors discuss key threats and opportunities for this future.
(From the book description, adapted)

Harri Oinas-Kukkonen & Henry Oinas-Kukkonen (2013). Humanizing the Web: Change and Social Innovation. Palgrave • ISBN-10: 113730569X, ISBN-13: 978-1137305695

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Milan Guenther: Intersection – How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap between Business, Technology, and People

What Is It About? Milan Guenther's book Intersection is about applying the practice of design strategically in complex enterprise environments, consisting of an organization and the ecosystem it is embedded in. It portrays a design approach and an enterprise design framework of 20 aspects to align the overarching strategic efforts of brand identity, enterprise architecture, and experience design on a common course. The book aims to give designers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders a model and a comprehensive vocabulary to tackle complex design challenges, and explains how to navigate key aspects and bridge diverging view points. Designed to help practitioners shape tomorrow's enterprises, Intersection connects design work on aspects as diverse as services, interactions, operational processes, and business models, down to tangible outcomes such as digital apps or physical buildings.

What Has This to Do with User Experience? Experience is one of the most fundamental strategic choices an organization has to face. Designing for experiences of customers, partners, staff, or other stakeholders is about defining the role the enterprise plays in the lives of people it addresses. Its offerings, services, processes, and systems are fulfilling a goal that can be expressed in experiential terms, in the ways they are transforming people's experiences. Experience design therefore is about much more than someone using a device – it touches all activities and parts of an enterprise. The enterprise design framework connects this thinking to applied design work. It brings together practices such as service design, information architecture, and interaction design, but also other aspects such as brand identity, business models, and enterprise architecture.

Is it About Theory or Practice? Although being based on some theory, Intersection attempts to be practical. In nine exemplary case studies, it explains how different organizations are applying design thinking and practice reshape their enterprise, with one example being SAP. Other case studies include Jeppesen (part of the Boeing company), Apple, BBVA, Instagram, and IKEA. Moving from strategy through conceptual design to tangible results, Intersection shows what is relevant at which point, and what expertise to involve when addressing a certain aspect or challenge.
(From the author, adapted)

Milan Guenther (2012). Intersection: How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap between Business, Technology, and People. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN-10: 0123884357, ISBN-13: 978-0123884350

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Tim Kadlec: Implementing Responsive Design – Building Sites for an Anywhere, Everywhere Web

New devices and platforms emerge daily. Browsers iterate at a remarkable pace. Faced with this volatile landscape we can either struggle for control or we can embrace the inherent flexibility of the Web. Responsive design is not just another technique – it is the beginning of the maturation of a medium and a fundamental shift in the way we think about the Web.

Implementing Responsive Design is a discussion about how this affects the way we design, build, and think about our sites. Readers will learn how to:

• Build responsive sites using a combination of fluid layouts, media queries and fluid media
• Adopt a responsive workflow from the very start of a project
• Enhance content for different devices
• Use feature-detection and server-side enhancement to provide a richer experience

As commentators on the book Website write, responsive Web design has "evolved from its original CSS-only definition into a broader adaptive philosophy." The book addresses this broader vision, and it seems to be "the perfect book to pick up after you've read Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte." It builds on the concepts that Marcotte puts forth in his book and takes the whole thing farther with lots of sidebars from other designers who are working on the various problems of responsive design.
(From book description on book Website, adapted)

Tim Kadlec (2012). Implementing Responsive Design: Building Sites for an Anywhere, Everywhere Web. New Riders • ISBN-10: 0321821688, ISBN-13: 978-0321821683

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Hunter Whitney: Data Insights – New Ways to Visualize and Make Sense of Data

Data Insights offers multi-disciplinary perspectives and useful information about how visualizations can open your eyes to data. This book takes a conversational approach to presenting an overview of the subject, while also focusing on key details. It highlights the ideas and work of a variety of people who are actively contributing to this still emerging field. Case studies from business analytics, healthcare, games, security, and network monitoring, among others, portray what is going on in data visualization today. A diverse blend of original illustrations and real-world examples, both classical and cutting-edge, help fill in the picture.

This book provides an approachable overview of important aspects of data visualization, and...

• Demonstrates, with a variety of case studies, how visualizations can foster a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of data
• Answers the question, "How can data visualization help me?" with discussions of how it fits into a wide array of purposes and situations
• Makes the case that data visualization is not just about technology; it also involves a deeply human process

Hunter Whitney (2012). Data Insights: New Ways to Visualize and Make Sense of Data. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN-10: 0123877938, ISBN-13: 978-0123877932

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Alberto Cairo: The Functional Art – An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization

Alberto Cairo (2012). The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization. New Riders • ISBN-10: 0321834739, ISBN-13: 978-0321834737

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Luke Wroblewski: Mobile First

According to the publisher, A Book Apart, the industry's long wait for the complete, strategic guide to mobile web design is finally over. Former Yahoo! design architect and co-creator of Bagcheck Luke Wroblewski, who is regarded as knowing more about mobile experience than the rest of us, packs all he knows into Mobile First, an entertaining, to-the-point guidebook. The book's data-driven strategies and battle tested techniques can help designers to become a master of mobile – and to improve their non-mobile design, too. Or as Wroblewski himself puts it: Mobile First is a short but information-packed book that makes the case for why Web sites and applications should increasingly be designed for mobile first and outlines how Web design teams can make the transition from designing for desktops/laptops to designing for mobile by specifying unique design considerations for mobile Web organization, actions, input, and layout.
(From book description and Luke Wroblewski's Website, adapted)

Luke Wroblewski (2011). Mobile First. A Book Apart • ISBN: 978-1-937557-02-7

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Ethan Marcotte: Responsive Web Design

From mobile browsers to netbooks and tablets, users are visiting Websites from an increasing array of devices and browsers. Often, designs are not ready for the multitude of form factors and interaction styles. Ethan Marcotte, who coined the term Responsive Web Design (RWD) in an article in A List Apart, wrote the book, Responsive Web Design, in which he shows how to think beyond the desktop and craft beautiful designs that anticipate and respond to the users' needs. He explores CSS techniques and design principles, including fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries, demonstrating how designers can deliver a quality experience to their users no matter how large – or small – their display is.
(From book description, adapted)

Ethan Marcotte (2011). Responsive Web Design. A Book Apart • ISBN: 978-0-9844425-7-7

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Bill Ferster: Interactive Visualization – Insight through Inquiry

Interactive visualization is emerging as a vibrant new form of communication, providing compelling presentations that allow viewers to interact directly with information in order to construct their own understandings of it. Building on a long tradition of print-based information visualization, interactive visualization utilizes the technological capabilities of computers, the Internet, and computer graphics to marshal multifaceted information in the service of making a point visually.

Bill Ferster's book Interactive Visualization – Insight through Inquiry offers an introduction to the field, presenting a framework for exploring historical, theoretical, and practical issues. It is not a "how-to" book tied to specific and soon-to-be-outdated software tools, but a guide to the concepts that are central to building interactive visualization projects whatever their ultimate form. The framework the book presents (known as the ASSERT model, developed by the author), allows the reader to explore the process of interactive visualization in terms of: (1) choosing good questions to ask; (2) finding appropriate data for answering them; (3) structuring that information; (4) exploring and analyzing the data; (5) representing the data visually; and (6) telling a story using the data. Interactive visualization draws on many disciplines to inform the final representation, and the book reflects this, covering basic principles of inquiry, data structuring, information design, statistics, cognitive theory, usability, working with spreadsheets, the Internet, and storytelling.
(From book description, adapted)

Bill Ferster (2012). Interactive Visualization: Insight through Inquiry. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262018152, ISBN-13: 978-0262018159

See the book in the book list...• Preliminary review page

Rachel Hinman: The Mobile Frontier – A Guide to Creating Mobile Experiences

According to author Rachel Hinman, mobile user experience is a new frontier for designers and UX professionals. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich design space is ripe with opportunities to invent new and more human ways for people to interact with information. Hinman's book, The Mobile Frontier, sets out to help readers navigate this unfamiliar and fast-changing landscape, and inspire them to explore the possibilities that mobile technology presents.

The book provides:

• Basic lessons in mobile UX design meant to enable readers to begin designing mobile experiences with confidence
• In-depth information on advanced mobile design topics UX professionals will spend the next 10+ years pioneering
• Interviews with mobile industry experts
• The tools and frameworks necessary to begin tackling mobile UX problems in a rapidly changing design space.

According to the publisher, it is the "essential UX guide for the mobile frontier."
(From book description, adapted)

Rachel Hinman (2012). The Mobile Frontier: A Guide to Creating Mobile Experiences. Rosenfeld Media • ISBN: 1-933820-55-1 (Paperback), ISBN: 1-933820-05-5 (Digital editions)

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Harold G. Nelson & Erik Stolterman: The Design Way – Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World (2nd Ed.)

According to the authors, Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman, humans did not discover fire – they designed it. They maintain that design is not defined by software programs, blueprints, or font choice. When we create new things – technologies, organizations, processes, systems, environments, ways of thinking – we engage in design.

With this expansive view of design as their premise, in The Design Way, Nelson and Stolterman make the case for design as its own culture of inquiry and action. They offer not a recipe for design practice or theorizing but a formulation of design culture's fundamental core of ideas. According to the authors, these ideas – which form "the design way" – are applicable to an infinite variety of design domains, from such traditional fields as architecture and graphic design to such nontraditional design areas as organizational, educational, interaction, and health care design.

In their book, the authors present design culture in terms of foundations (first principles), fundamentals (core concepts), and metaphysics. They then discuss these issues from both a learner's and a practitioner's perspectives. The text of this second edition is accompanied by new detailed images, "schemas" that visualize, conceptualize, and structure the authors' understanding of design inquiry. This text itself has been revised and expanded throughout, in part in response to reader feedback.
(From book description, adapted)

Harold G. Nelson & Erik Stolterman (2012). The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World (2nd Ed.). The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262018179, ISBN-13: 978-0262018173

See the book in the book list...• Preliminary review page

Tomer Sharon: It's Our Research – Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects

Tomer Sharon's book It's Our Research provides a strategic framework for people who practice UX research and who wish to be heard by their stakeholders. It provides readers with the techniques needed to involve stakeholders throughout the process of planning, execution, analysis, and reporting UX research. According to the book description, the book helps readers to dramatically increase the chances that product managers, engineers, and management agree to do research and act upon its results, when they follow the author's techniques and methods detailed inside.

The book...

• Features a series of video interviews with UX practitioners and researchers
• Provides dozens of case studies and visuals from international research practitioners
• Provides a toolset that will help you justify your work to stakeholders, deal with office politics, and hone your client skills
• Presents tried and tested techniques for working to reach positive, useful, and fruitful outcomes
  (From book description, adapted)

Tomer Sharon (2012). It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Project. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN-10: 0123851300 ISBN-13: 978-0123851307

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Howard Rheingold: Net Smart – How to Thrive Online

Like it or not, knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century. But how can we use digital media so that they make us empowered participants rather than passive receivers, grounded, well-rounded people rather than multitasking basket cases? In Net Smart, cyberculture expert Howard Rheingold shows us how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully.

Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. Rheingold outlines five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information, and network smarts. He points out that there is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. If we combine our individual efforts wisely, it could produce a more thoughtful society: countless small acts like publishing a Web page or sharing a link could add up to a public good that enriches everybody.
(From book description, adapted)

Rheingold, Howard (2012). Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262017458, ISBN-13: 978-0262017459

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Daniel Widgor & Denis Wixon: Brave New NUI World – Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture

Touch and gestural devices have been hailed as next evolutionary step in human-computer interaction. As software companies struggle to catch up with one another in terms of developing the next great touch-based interface, designers are charged with the daunting task of keeping up with the advances in new technology and this new aspect to user experience design. Product and interaction designers, developers and managers are already well versed in UI design, but touch-based interfaces have added a new level of complexity. They need quick references and real-world examples in order to make informed decisions when designing for these particular interfaces. Brave NUI World is the first practical book for product and interaction developers and designing touch and gesture interfaces. Written by developers of industry-first, multi-touch, multi-user products, this book gives readers the necessary tools and information to integrate touch and gesture practices into their daily work, presenting scenarios, problem solving, metaphors, and techniques intended to avoid making mistakes.
(From book description, adapted)

Widgor, Daniel & Wixon, Denis (2011). Brave NUI World: Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture. Morgan-Kaufmann • ISBN-10: 0123822319, ISBN-13: 978-0123822314

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Luke Williams: Disrupt – Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business

In a business world of nonstop change, there's, according to Luke Williams, author of the book Disrupt, only one way to win the game: Transform it entirely. This requires a revolution in thinking – a steady stream of disruptive strategies and unexpected solutions. In his book , Williams shows how to generate those strategies and deliver those solutions.

The book reflects Williams' experience at frog design, one of the world's leading innovation firms. Williams shows how to combine fluid creativity with analytical rigor in a simple, complete, five-stage process for successfully disrupting any market: (1) Craft a disruptive hypothesis, (2) define a disruptive marketing opportunity, (3) generate several disruptive ideas, (4), shape a solution, and (5) make a disruptive pitch. In February 2012, Williams gave a keynote presentation about this topic at the Interaction 2012 conference in Dublin, Ireland, that our author attended.
(From book description, adapted)

Williams, Luke (2010). Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business. FT Press • ISBN-10: 0137025149, ISBN-13: 978-0137025145

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Janet H. Murray: Inventing the Medium – Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice

Digital artifacts pervade our lives, and the design decisions that shape them affect how we think, act, communicate, and understand the world. But the pace of change has been so rapid that technical innovation is outstripping design and, as a consequence, product design teams struggle to articulate shared and enduring design goals. With Inventing the Medium, Janet Murray addresses this issue and provides a unified vocabulary and a common methodology for the design of digital objects and environments.

Murray explains that interaction designers should think of all objects made with bits as belonging to a single new medium: the digital medium. Designers can speed the process of useful and lasting innovation by focusing on the collective cultural task of inventing this new medium. Exploring strategies for maximizing the expressive power of digital artifacts, Murray identifies and examines four representational affordances of digital environments that provide the core palette for designers across applications: computational procedures, user participation, navigable space, and encyclopedic capacity. Creative exercises for students and thought experiments for practitioners allow readers to apply these ideas to particular design problems.
(From book description, adapted)

Murray, Janet H. (2012). Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0-262-01614-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01614-8

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Helmut Degen and XiaoWei Yuan: UX Best Practices – How to Achieve More Impact with User Experience

This book aims to help readers evolve to a user-centered product development philosophy by presenting real-world user experience success strategies from global corporations. It features in-depth case studies from Yahoo!, Siemens, SAP, Haier, Intuit, Tencent, and more and, thus offers proven methods for instituting user-centered design in industrial environments. As a comprehensive guide, the book covers a variety of user experience techniques, such as analyzing user needs and expectations, creating design concepts, prototyping, using agile development, conducting usability testing, developing user interface guidelines, defining user interface patterns, and specifying metrics. (From book description, adapted)

By the way, the SAP case study was contributed by SAP UX colleague Andreas Hauser and focuses on SAP Business ByDesign.

Degen, H.; Yuan, X. W. (2011). UX Best Practices: How to Achieve More Impact with User Experience. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media • ISBN-10: 007175251X, ISBN-13: 978-0071752510

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Yvonne Rogers, Jenny Preece, and Helen Sharp: Interaction Design – Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (3rd Edition)

A revision of the #1 text in the human-computer interaction (HCI) field, Interaction Design, the third edition is an ideal resource for learning the interdisciplinary skills needed for interaction design, HCI, information design, Web design, and ubiquitous computing.

The authors are acknowledged leaders and educators in their field, with a strong global reputation. They bring depth of scope to the subject in this new edition, encompassing the latest technologies and devices including social networking, Web 2.0 and mobile devices. The third edition also adds, develops and updates cases, examples and questions to bring the book in line with the latest in Human Computer Interaction.

Interaction Design offers a cross-disciplinary, practical and process-oriented approach to human-computer interaction, showing not just what principles ought to apply to interaction design, but crucially how they can be applied. The book focuses on how to design interactive products that enhance and extend the way people communicate, interact and work. Motivating examples are included to illustrate both technical, but also social and ethical issues, making the book approachable and adaptable for both computer science and non-computer science users. Interviews with key HCI luminaries are included and provide an insight into current and future trends.
(From book description, adapted)

Yvonne Rogers, Jenny Preece, and Helen Sharp (2011). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (3rd Edition). John Wiley and Sons • ISBN-10: 0470665769, ISBN-13: 978-0470665763

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Arnie Lund: User Experience Management – Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams

The role of UX manager is of vital importance – it means leading a productive team, influencing businesses to adopt user-centered design, and delivering valuable products customers. Few UX professionals who find themselves in management positions have formal training in management. More often than not they are promoted to a management position after having proven themselves as an effective and successful practitioner.Yet as important as the position of manager is to the advancement of the field there are no books that specifically address the needs of user experience managers. Though information is available on the Web, nothing ties that advice together in the way a manager would need to integrate it in their work.

User Experience Management speaks directly to the UX manager and to the unique challenges one may face. It outlines the robust framework for how to be an effective UX manager, from creating a team, to orchestrating product development, to ensuring UX is not compromised, to achieving company buy-in on results. This acts as a checklist readers can use to make sure they have covered the bases as they think about how to build their own user experience programs. Written by an experienced UX manager, and containing testamonials from many leading managers in the field, managers both current and aspiring will find this an invaluable reference loaded with ideas and techniques for managing user experience.
(From book description, adapted)

Arnie Lund (2011). User Experience Management: Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN: 978-0123854964

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Bill Moggridge: Designing Media

Mainstream media, often known simply as MSM, have not yet disappeared in a digital takeover of the media landscape. But the long-dominant MSM – television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and books – have had to respond to emergent digital media. Newspapers have interactive Web sites; television broadcasts over the Internet; books are published in both electronic and print editions. In Designing Media, Bill Moggridge examines connections and conflicts between old and new media, describing how the MSM have changed and how new patterns of media consumption are emerging. The book features interviews with thirty-seven significant figures in both traditional and new forms of mass communication; interviewees range from the publisher of the New York Times to the founder of Twitter. At the end of each chapter, Moggridge comments on the implications for designing media. Designing Media is illustrated with hundreds of images, with color throughout. A DVD accompanying the book includes excerpts from all of the interviews, and the material can be browsed at www.designing-media.com.
(From book description, adapted)

Bill Moggridge (2010). Designing Media. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262014858, ISBN-13: 978-0262014854

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Mike Kuniavsky: Smart Things – Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design

The world of smart shoes, appliances, and phones is already here, but the practice of user experience (UX) design for ubiquitous computing is still relatively new. Design companies like IDEO and frogdesign are regularly asked to design products that unify software interaction, device design and service design – which are all the key components of ubiquitous computing UX – and practicing designers need a way to tackle practical challenges of design. Theory is not enough for them – the industry is now mature enough to have tried and tested best practices and case studies from the field.

Smart Things presents a problem-solving approach to addressing designers' needs and concentrates on process, rather than technological detail, to keep from being quickly outdated. It pays close attention to the capabilities and limitations of the medium in question and discusses the trade-offs and challenges of design in a commercial environment. Divided into two sections, frameworks and techniques, the book discusses broad design methods and case studies that reflect key aspects of these approaches. The book then presents a set of techniques highly valuable to a practicing designer. It is intentionally not a comprehensive tutorial of user-centered design, but it is a handful of techniques useful when designing ubiquitous computing user experiences. In short, Smart Things gives its readers both the "why" of this kind of design and the "how" in well-defined chunks.
(From book description, adapted)

Mike Kuniavsky (2010). Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN-10: 0123748992, ISBN-13: 978-0123748997

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Donald A. Norman: Living with Complexity

If only today's technology were simpler! It's the universal lament, but it's wrong. We don't want simplicity. Simple tools are not up to the task. The world is complex; our tools need to match that complexity.

Simplicity turns out to be more complex than we thought. In his provocative and informative book, Living with Complexity, Don Norman writes that the complexity of our technology must mirror the complexity and richness of our lives. It's not complexity that's the problem, it's bad design. Bad design complicates things unnecessarily and confuses us. Good design can tame complexity.

Norman gives us a crash course in the virtues of complexity. But even such simple things as salt and pepper shakers, doors, and light switches become complicated when we have to deal with many of them, each somewhat different. Managing complexity, says Norman, is a partnership. Designers have to produce things that tame complexity. But we too have to do our part: we have to take the time to learn the structure and practice the skills. This is how we mastered reading and writing, driving a car, and playing sports, and this is how we can master our complex tools.

Complexity is good. Simplicity is misleading. The good life is complex, rich, and rewarding – but only if it is understandable, sensible, and meaningful.
(From product description, adapted)

Donald A. Norman (2010). Living with Complexity. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262014866, ISBN-13: 978-0262014861

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Manuel Imaz & David Benyon: Designing with Blends – Conceptual Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering

The evolution of the concept of mind in cognitive science over the past 25 years creates new ways to think about the interaction of people and computers. New ideas about embodiment, metaphor as a fundamental cognitive process, and conceptual integration – a blending of older concepts that gives rise to new, emergent properties – have become increasingly important in software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI). If once computing was based on algorithms, mathematical theories, and formal notations, now the use of stories, metaphors, and blends can contribute to well-informed, sensitive software design. In Designing with Blends, Manuel Imaz and David Benyon show how these new metaphors and concepts of mind allow us to discover new aspects of HCI-SE. The authors argue that the dominance of digital media in our lives demands changes in HCI-SE based on advances in cognitive science. They offer both theoretical grounding and practical examples that illustrate the advantages of applying cognitive concepts to software design. A new view of cognition, they argue, will develop a cognitive literacy in software and interaction design that helps designers understand the opportunities of digital technology and provides people with a more satisfying interactive experience.
(From book presentation, adapted)

Manuel Imaz & David Benyon (2007). Designing with Blends: Conceptual Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering . The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262090422, ISBN-13: 978-0262090421

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Thomas Erickson & David W. McDonald: HCI Remixed – Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community

Over almost three decades, the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has produced a rich and varied literature. Although the focus of attention today is naturally on new work, older contributions that played a role in shaping the trajectory and character of the field have much to tell us. The contributors to HCI Remixed were asked to reflect on a single work at least ten years old that influenced their approach to HCI. The result is this collection of fifty-one short, engaging, and idiosyncratic essays, reflections on a range of works in a variety of forms that chart the emergence of a new field. Taken together, the essays offer an accessible, lively, and engaging introduction to HCI research that reflects the diversity of the field's beginnings.
(From book presentation, adapted)

Thomas Erickson & David W. McDonald (2008). HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262050889, ISBN-13: 978-0262050883

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Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman & Marc Smith: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL

Businesses, entrepreneurs, individuals, and government agencies alike are looking to social network analysis (SNA) tools for insight into trends, connections, and fluctuations in social media. Microsoft's NodeXL is a free, open-source SNA plug-in for use with Excel. It provides instant graphical representation of relationships of complex networked data. NodeXL was developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts that bring together information studies, computer science, sociology, human-computer interaction, and over 20 years of visual analytic theory and information visualization into a simple tool anyone can use. This makes it of interest not only to end-users but also to researchers and students studying visual and network analytics and their application in the real world. In Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL, members of the NodeXL development team up provide readers with a thorough and practical guide for using the tool.
(From book presentation, adapted)

Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman & Marc Smith (2010). Analyzing Social Media Networks with Node XL. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN 13: 978-0123822291

See the book in the book list... • Read the Review • Book Website

Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks: Storytelling for User Experience

Telling stories is one of the most natural ways to share information, as old as the human race. This book is not about a new technique, but how to use something we already know in a new way. Stories help us gather and communicate user research, put a human face on analytic data, communicate design ideas, encourage collaboration and innovation, and create a sense of shared history and purpose. This book looks across the full spectrum of user experience design to discover when and how to use stories to improve our products. Whether you are a researcher, designer, analyst or manager, you will find ideas and techniques you can put to use in your practice. If you need to share research and design insights in a compelling and effective way, struggle to communicate the meaning of a large body of data in a way that everyone just "gets," or want to explore a new, innovative idea, and imagine its future, this book can help you, by showing you how and when to choose, create and use stories.
(From book presentation, adapted)

Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks (2010). Storytelling for User Experience. Rosenfeld Media • ISBN: 1-933820-47-0 (Paperback + PDF), ISBN: 1-933820-03-9 (2 PDF editions)

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Jeff Johnson: Designing with the Mind in Mind – A Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules

Early user interface (UI) practitioners were trained in cognitive psychology, from which UI design rules were based. But as the field evolves, designers enter the field from many disciplines. Practitioners today have enough experience in UI design that they have been exposed to design rules, but it is essential that they understand the psychology behind the rules in order to effectively apply them. In Designing with the Mind in Mind, Jeff Johnson, provides designers with just enough background in perceptual and cognitive psychology that UI design guidelines make intuitive sense rather than being just a list of rules to follow.
(From book presentation, adapted)

Jeff Johnson (2010). Designing with the Mind in Mind: A Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules. Morgan Kaufmann • ISBN-10: 1-012375030X, ISBN-13: 978-0123750303

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Nathan Shedroff: Design Is the Problem

Design makes a tremendous impact on the produced world in terms of usability, resources, understanding, and priorities. What we produce, how we serve customers and other stakeholders, and even how we understand how the world works is all affected by the design of models and solutions. Designers have an unprecedented opportunity to use their skills to make meaningful, sustainable change in the world – if they know how to focus their skills, time, and agendas. In Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable, Nathan Shedroff examines how the endemic culture of design often creates unsustainable solutions, and shows how designers can bake sustainability into their design processes in order to produce more sustainable solutions.
(From book presentation, adapted)

Nathan Shedroff (2009). Design Is the Problem. Rosenfeld Media • ISBN: 1-933820-00-4 (Paperback + PDF), ISBN: 1-933820-01-2 (2 PDF editions)

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Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, & Carla Faria Leitão: Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI

Semiotic engineering was originally proposed as a semiotic approach to designing user interface languages. Over the years, it evolved into a semiotic theory of human-computer interaction (HCI). It views HCI as computer-mediated communication between designers and users at interaction time. The system speaks for its designers in various types of conversations specified at design time. These conversations communicate the designers' understanding of who the users are, what they know the users want or need to do, in which preferred ways, and why. The designers' message to users includes even the interactive language in which users will have to communicate back with the system in order to achieve their specific goals. Hence, the process is, in fact, one of communication about communication, or metacommunication. Semiotic engineering has two methods to evaluate the quality of metacommunication in HCI: the semiotic inspection method (SIM) and the communicability evaluation method (CEM). Up to now, they have been mainly used and discussed in technical contexts. In this book, the authors discuss how SIM and CEM, which are both qualitative methods, can also be used in scientific contexts to generate new knowledge about HCI. To illustrate their points, they present an extensive case study with the free open-source digital audio editor Audacity. They show how the results obtained with a triangulation of SIM and CEM point at new research avenues not only for semiotic engineering and HCI but also for other areas of computer science such as software engineering and programming.
(From book abstract, adapted)

Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, & Carla Faria Leitão (2009). Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI. Morgan & Claypool Publishers • ISBN: 9781598299441 (Paperback), ISBN: 9781598299458 (Online version)

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Garr Reynolds: Presentation Zen Design – Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations

In his book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds gave readers the framework for planning, putting together, and delivering successful presentations. Now, he takes us further into the design realm and shows how we can apply time-honored design principles to presentation layouts. Throughout Presentation Zen Design, Garr shares his lessons on designing effective presentations that contain text, graphs, color, images, and video. After establishing guidelines for each of the various elements, he explains how to achieve an overall harmony and balance using the tenets of Zen simplicity. Not only will you discover how to design your slides for more professional-looking presentations, you'll learn to communicate more clearly and will accomplish the goal of making a stronger, more lasting connection with your audience.
(From product description, adapted)

Garr Reynolds (2009). Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations. New Riders Press • ISBN: 0321668790

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Hartmut Esslinger: A Fine Line – How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business

For the first time, Hartmut Esslinger, internationally acclaimed designer and founder of frog design, inc., reveals the secrets to better business through better design. Having spent forty years helping build the world's most recognizable brands, Esslinger shows how business leaders and designers can join forces to build creative strategies that will ensure a more profitable and sustainable future.

A Fine Line shares the amazing story of Esslinger's transformation from industrial design wunderkind to a global innovation powerhouse, while detailing the very real challenges facing businesses in the new global economy. Offering companies far more than a temporary innovation booster, Esslinger shows how he and frog build creative design into the framework of an organization's competitive strategy, the same approach that has worked so well for leading edge companies such as Sony, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple. SAP employees will find two pages in the book telling the enjoy story and a few familiar names...
(From product description, adapted)

Hartmut Esslinger (2009). A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business. Jossey-Bass • ISBN: 978-0470451021 (German version: Schwungrat: Wie Design-Strategien die Zukunft der Wirtschaft gestalten. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH • ISBN :978-3527504923)

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Todd Zaki Warfel: Prototyping – A Practitioner's Guide

Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you to flesh out design ideas, test assumptions, and gather real-time feedback from users.

With this book, Todd Zaki Warfel shows how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team.
(From product description)

Todd Zaki Warfel (2009). Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide. Rosenfeld Media • ISBN: 978-1933820217

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Riccardo Mazza: Introduction to Information Visualization

Information Visualization is a relatively young field that is acquiring more and more consensus in both academic and industrial environments. This concise introduction to the subject explores the use of computer-supported interactive graphical representations to explain data and amplify cognition. Written in a lively, yet rigorous, style the book explores ways of communicating ideas or facts about data, and shows how to validate hypotheses, and facilitate the discovery of new facts via exploration.

The concepts outlined in the book are illustrated in a simple and thorough manner, building a reference for those situations in which graphic representation of information, generated and assisted by the use of computer tools, can help in visualizing ideas, data and concepts. With suggestions for setting communications systems based on, or availing of, graphic representations, this textbook illustrates cases, situations, tools and methods which help make the graphic representations of information effective and efficient.
(From product description, adapted)

Riccardo Mazza (2009). Introduction to Information Visualization. Springer. ISBN: 978-1848002180

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Robert Schumacher: Handbook of Global User Research

User research is global – yet despite its pervasiveness, practitioners are not all well equipped to work globally. What may have worked in Nigeria may not be accepted in Russia, may be done differently in Brazil, may partly work in China, and may completely fail in Kuwait. And what often goes less noticed, but can be equally vexing are technical, logistical and planning issues such as hiring qualified translators, payment procedures, travel issues, setting up facilities and finding test participants.

The Handbook of Global User Research is the first book to focus on global user research. The book collects insight from UX professionals from nine countries and, following a typical project timeline, presents practical insights into the preparation, fieldwork, analysis and reporting, and overall project management for global user research projects. Any user experience professional that works on global projects – including those new to the field, UX veterans who need information on this expanding aspect of user research, and students – will need this book to do their job effectively.
(From product description, adapted)

Robert Schumacher (2009). Handbook of Global User Research. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 978-0123748522

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Dan Saffer: Designing for Interaction

Designing for Interaction is an introduction to the practice of interaction design, the design discipline behind such products as the iPhone and other touchscreen devices and innovative Web sites like Flickr. Aimed at new practitioners and students – as well as user experience professionals and developers – it is a comprehensive look at the discipline, from current methods to its future. This guide takes a holistic approach looking at interaction design for the Web, software, and devices. This new edition adds information on design strategy, extended research analysis, conceptual models, brainstorming, and user testing and development.

More than just a how-to manual, this is the only book on the subject coming from a design rather that computer science background. Filled with tips, real-world projects, and interviews of leading practitioners such as Marc Rettig, Brenda Laurel and Hugh Dubberly, the book promises readers to get a solid grounding in everything they need to successfully tackle interaction design.
(From book cover, adapted)

Dan Saffer (2009). Designing for Interaction (2nd Edition). New Riders Press. ISBN: 978-0321643391

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Graham Pullin: Design Meets Disability

In Design Meets Disability, Graham Pullin shows us how design and disability can inspire each other. In the Eameses' work there was a healthy tension between cut-to-the-chase problem solving and more playful explorations. Pullin offers examples of how design can meet disability today. Why, he asks, shouldn't hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear? What new forms of braille signage might proliferate if designers kept both sighted and visually impaired people in mind? Can simple designs avoid the need for complicated accessibility features? Can such emerging design methods as "experience prototyping" and "critical design" complement clinical trials?

Pullin also presents a series of interviews with leading designers about specific disability design projects, including stepstools for people with restricted growth, prosthetic legs (and whether they can be both honest and beautifully designed), and text-to-speech technology with tone of voice. When design meets disability, the diversity of complementary, even contradictory, approaches can enrich each field.
(From book cover, adapted)

Graham Pullin (2009). Design Meets Disability. The MIT Press. ISBN: 978-0262162555

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Hasso Plattner, Christoph Meinel & Ulrich Weinberg: Design Thinking (in German)

In multidisciplinary teams astoundingly creative processes can be stimulated. But how can this be accomplished? The authors, including SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, propose to use Design Thinking, a groundbreaking method to spur innovation. In their book of the same name, Design Thinking, they demonstrate how you can think creatively and in a user-oriented way and thus are able to create innovative, market-oriented products. The method is comprised of the following steps:

• Understand: Analyze the problem and its environment
• Comprehend: Observe users and define starting points for innovation
• Visualize: Think visually in the whole team
• Solve: Build prototypes that users can put their hands on
• Test: Check products jointly with users

Design Thinking – the first book about the Design Thinking method – combines the craft of engineers with creativity in an impressing manner.
(From book advertisement, translated and adapted)

Hasso Plattner, Christoph Meinel & Ulrich Weinberg (2009). Design Thinking. mi-Wirtschaftsbuch. ISBN-10: 3868800131, ISBN-13: 978-3868800135

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Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs: Designing the User Interface (5th Edition)

The much-anticipated fifth edition of the all-time classic textbook Designing the User Interface is a totally updated resource with extensive fresh material and references in every chapter. The opening more ambitiously positions user interfaces as the critical determinant of consumer product and professional tool success.  The authors have also been getting bolder in claiming HCI's role for successes such as cell phones, iPhones, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, etc.  Similarly in the afterword, they take on the concerns of social impact and eight enduring controversies in our field such as user control versus autonomous agents and 2D versus 3D visualizations. The authors use a full page wordle display for each chapter opening – these displays really show that each chapter is about users but each has a distinct set of terms, wonderfully rendered by Jonathan Feinberg's clever program wordle.
(From Ben Shneiderman, pers. comm., adapted)

Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen & Steven Jacobs (2009). Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed). Pearson Addison-Wesley. ISBN-10: 0321537351, ISBN-13: 978-0321537355 1

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Dana Chisnell & Jeffrey Rubin: Handbook of Usability Testing (2nd Edition)

Whether its software, a cell phone, or a refrigerator, your customer wants – no, expects – your product to be easy to use. This fully revised handbook provides clear, step-by-step guidelines to help you test your product for usability. Completely updated with current industry best practices, it can give you that all-important marketplace advantage: products that perform the way users expect. You'll learn to recognize factors that limit usability, decide where testing should occur, set up a test plan to assess goals for your products usability, and more.
(From book cover, adapted)

Dana Chisnell & Jeffrey Rubin (2008). Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN-10: 0470185481, ISBN-13: 978-0470185483

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Kim Goodwin: Designing for the Digital Age

Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. Designing for the Digital Age addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.
(From book description, adapted)

Kim Goodwin (2009). Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN-10: 0470229101, ISBN-13: 978-0470229101

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Gary M. Olson, Ann Zimmerman & Nathan Bos (Eds.): Scientific Collaboration on the Internet

Gary M. Olson, Ann Zimmerman & Nathan Bos (Eds.) (2008). Scientific Collaboration on the Internet. The MIT Press. ISBN-10: 0262151200, ISBN-13: 978-0262151207

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Nevin Berger, Michael Arent, Jonathan Arnowitz & Fred Sampson: Effective Prototyping with Excel

Nevin Berger, Michael Arent, Jonathan Arnowitz & Fred Sampson (2009). Effective Prototyping with Excel: A Practical Handbook for Developers and Designers (Interactive Technologies). Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN-10: 0120885824, ISBN-13: 978-0120885824

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Ben Fry: Visualizing Data

Visualizing Data is Ben Fry's book about computational information design. It covers the path from raw data to how we understand it, detailing how to begin with a set of numbers and produce images or software that lets you view and interact with information. Unlike nearly all books in this field, it is a hands-on guide intended for people who want to learn how to actually build a data visualization.
(From Ben Fry's Website, adapted)

Ben Fry (2008). Visualizing Data. O'Reilly. ISBN-10: 0596514557, ISBN-13: 978-0596514556 (Paperback)

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Bill Buxton: Sketching User Experiences – Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

Hardly a day goes by that we don't see an announcement for some new product or technology that is going to make our lives easier, solve some or all of our problems, or simply make the world a better place. However, the reality is that few of these products survive, much less deliver on their promise. But are we learning from these expensive mistakes? Rather than rethink the underlying process that brings these products to market, the more common strategy seems to be the shotgun method, that is, keep blasting away in the hope that one of the pellets will eventually hit the bull's eye. This book's goal is to help with this problem: to inspire and encourage HCI and other design professionals to try new methods, test themselves with the exercises and projects, and see an improvement in innovative interaction design that works.
(From amazon.com, adapted)

Bill Buxton (2007). Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN-10: 0123740371, ISBN-13: 978-0123740373

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Colin Ware: Visual Thinking for Design

Increasingly, designers need to present information in ways that aid their audiences thinking process. Fortunately, results from the relatively new science of human visual perception provide valuable guidance. In Visual Thinking: For Design, Colin Ware takes what we now know about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition – extensions of the viewers brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the users hand. Experienced professional designers and students alike will learn how to maximize the power of the information tools they design for the people who use them.
(From book cover, adapted)

Colin Ware (2008). Visual Thinking: For Design . Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN-10: 0123708966, ISBN-13: 978-0123708960

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Alan Cooper, Robert M. Reimann & Dave Cronin: About Face 3.0

This completely updated volume presents the effective and practical tools you need to design great desktop applications, Web 2.0 sites, and mobile devices. You'll learn the principles of good product behavior and gain an understanding of Cooper's Goal-Directed Design method, which involves everything from conducting user research to defining your product using personas and scenarios. Ultimately, you'll acquire the knowledge to design the best possible digital products and services.
(From book cover, adapted)

Alan Cooper, Robert M. Reimann & Dave Cronin (2007). About Face 3.0: The Essentials of Design. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0470084111 (Paperback)

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Rich Gold: The Plenitude – Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff

According to John Seeley Brown, this small book "is a gem that will shape your way of seeing and thinking about the world forever." Rich, who died in 2003, was, as Brown puts it, "one of the true visionaries of Xerox PARC and this unique book, in both its form and content, provides a window into a brilliant and incredibly imaginative mind at work." Gold writes his book from the seemingly contradictory perspectives of an artist, scientist, designer, and engineer – all professions pursued by him, sometimes simultaneously, in the course of his career – and illustrates it with witty cartoons.
(From book cover, adapted)

Gold, Rich (2007). The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff. The MIT Press. ISBN-10: 0262072890, ISBN-13: 978-0262072892

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Harold Thimbleby: Press On – Principles of Interaction Programming

Interactive systems and devices, from mobile phones to office copiers, do not fulfill their potential for a wide variety of reasons – not all of them technical. In his book, Thimbleby shows that we can design better interactive systems and devices if we draw on sound computer science principles. While sound programming concepts improve device design, Press On also provides the insights, concepts, and programming tools to improve usability.
(From book cover, adapted)

Harold Thimbleby (2007). Press On: Principles of Interaction Programming.The MIT Press. ISBN-10: 0262201704, ISBN-13: 978-0262201704

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Casey Reas & Ben Fry: Processing – A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists

This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone to wants to program images, animation, and interactivity. Tutorial units make the bulk of the book.
(From book cover, adapted)

Casey Reas & Ben Fry (2007). Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists. The MIT Press. ISBN-10: 0262182629, ISBN-13: 978-0262182621

See the book in the book list... • Processing Website • Read the review

Jeff Johnson: GUI Bloopers 2.0 – Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos

A major revision of a classic reference, GUI Bloopers 2.0 looks at user interface design bloopers from commercial software, Websites, Web applications, and information appliances, explaining how intelligent, well-intentioned professionals make these mistakes – and how you can avoid them. While equipping you with the minimum of theory, author Jeff Johnson presents the reality of interface design in an entertaining, anecdotal, and instructive way.
(From amazon.com, adapted)

Jeff Johnson (2007). GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 0123706432

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Petra Abele, Jörn Hurtienne, & Jochen Prümper: Usability Management bei SAP-Projekten. Grundlagen – Vorgehen – Methoden (in German)

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Robert Spence: Information Visualization (2nd Edition)

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Stephen Few: Information Dashboard Design

Stephen Few (2006). Information Dashboard Design. O'Reilly. ISBN: 0596100167

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Jonathan Lazar (Ed.): Universal Usability

Jonathan Lazar (2007). Universal Usability. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0470027274

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Sarah Horton: Access by Design – A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers

Sarah Horton (2005). Access by Design. New Riders Press. ISBN: 032131140X

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Josef Köble: Developing Accessible Applications with SAP NetWeaver (Entwicklung barrierefreier Software mit SAP NetWeaver)

This book, put together by SAP User Experience colleagues, is a complete reference for developing accessible software applications with SAP NetWeaver. It describes the requirements for accessible business software and explains the concepts and development based on tools, such as the ABAP Workbench and NW Developer Studio. The authors cover the development with classical Dynpros as well as with Web Dynpro (ABAP und Java) and with SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe. In addition, the book explains how applications can be tested and describes their configuration on the frontend as well as the backend side. All in all, readers obtain a complete overview of all existing controls and their usage. QA-Managers also get valuable hints on how the developed applications can be tested for accessible functionality.
(From Website, translated and adapted)

Josef Köble (2007). Developing Accessible Applications with SAP NetWeaver. Galileo Press. ISBN: 1592291120, ISBN: 978-1592292424 (e-book)
German Version: Josef Köble (2007). Entwicklung barrierefreier Software mit SAP NetWeaver. Galileo Press. ISBN: 3898428621

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Jonathan Arnowitz, Michael Arent, & Nevin Berger: Effective Prototyping for Software Makers

Jonathan Arnowitz, Michael Arent, & Nevin Berger (2007). Effective Prototyping for Software Makers. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 978-0120885688

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Bill Moggridge: Designing Interactions

Bill Moggridge (2006). Designing Interactions. MIT Press. ISBN: 978-0262134743

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George Stiny: Shape – Talking about Seeing and Doing

George Stiny (2006). Shape – Talking about Seeing and Doing. MIT Press. ISBN: 0262195313

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Paul A. Fishwick (Ed.): Aesthetic Computing

Paul A. Fishwick (Ed.) (2006). Aesthetic Computing. The MIT Press. ISBN: 026206250

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John Maeda: The Laws of Simplicity

John Maeda (2006). The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life. The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262134721

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Cyrus D. Khazaeli: Systemisches Design

Cyrus D. Khazaeli (2005). Systemisches Design. Rowohlt. ISBN: 3499600781 (in German)

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Dave Shea & Molly E. Holzschlag: The Zen of CSS Design

Dave Shea & Molly E. Holzschlag (2005). The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter). Addison Wesley. ISBN: 0321303474

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Anthony Dunne: Hertzian Tales – Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design

Anthony Dunne (2005). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. MIT Press. ISBN: 0262042320

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Jörg Beringer & Karen Holtzblatt: Designing Composite Applications

Jörg Beringer & Karen Holtzblatt (2006). Designing Composite Applications. Galileo Press (SAP PRESS). ISBN: 159229-0655

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Debbie Stone, Caroline Jarrett, Mark Woodroffe, & Shailey Minocha: User Interface Design and Evaluation

Debbie Stone, Caroline Jarrett, Mark Woodroffe, & Shailey Minocha (2005). User Interface Design and Evaluation. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 0120884364

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Bruce Sterling: Shaping Things

Bruce Sterling (2005). Shaping Things. MIT Press. ISBN: 0262693267 or 026219533X

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Jenifer Tidwell: Designing Interfaces

Jenifer Tidwell (2005). Designing Interfaces. O'Reilly Media. ISBN: 0596008031

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Alistair Cockburn: Writing Effective Use Cases

Alistair Cockburn (2001). Writing Effective Use Cases. Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 0201702258

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Tom Kelley & Jonathan Littman: The Ten Faces of Innovation

Tom Kelley & Jonathan Littmann (2005). The Ten Faces of Innovation. Currency. ISBN: 0385512074

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Clifford Nass & Scott Brave: Wired for Speech – How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship

Clifford Nass & Scott Brave (2005). Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship. The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262140926

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Daniel H. Pink: A Whole New Mind – Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age

Daniel H. Pink (2005). A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Riverhead. ISBN: 1573223085

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Catherine Courage & Kathy Baxter: Understanding Your Users – A Practical Guide to User Requirements Methods, Tools, and Techniques

Catherine Courage & Kathy Baxter (2004). Understanding Your Users – A Practical Guide to User Requirements Methods, Tools, and Techniques. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1558609350

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John Thackara: In the Bubble – Designing in a Complex World

John Thackara (2005). In the Bubble – Designing in a Complex World. The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262201577

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Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza: The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction

Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza (2005). The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction. The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262042207

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Jonas Löwgren & Erik Stolterman: Thoughtful Interaction Design

Jonas Löwgren & Erik Stolterman (2004). Thoughtful Interaction Design. The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262122715

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Karen Holtzblatt, Jessamy Burns Wendell, & Shelley Wood: Rapid Contextual Design

Karen Holtzblatt, Jessamy Burns Wendell, & Shelley Wood (2004). Rapid Contextual Design. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 0123540518

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Keld Bødker, Finn Kensing, & Jesper Simonsen: Participatory IT Design

Keld Bødker, Finn Kensing, & Jesper Simonsen (2004). Participatory IT Design. The MIT Press. ISBN: 026202568X

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John McCarthy, & Peter Wright: Technology as Experience

Susan Fowler & Victor Stanwick: Web Application Design Handbook – Best Practices for Web-Based Software

• Putting a complete, working application on a web page.
• Displaying only the results of a process that is actually running on a network server elsewhere.
• Automatically updating a desktop application by downloading code over the Internet.

Susan Fowler & Victor Stanwick (2004). Web Application Design Handbook: Best Practices for Web-Based Software. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1558607528

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Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William M. Snyder, & Richard MacDermott: Cultivating Communities of Practice

Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William M. Snyder, & Richard MacDermott (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN: 1578513308

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Malcolm McCullouch: Digital Ground – Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing

Malcolm McCullough (2004). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. MIT Press. ISBN: 0262134357

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Donald A. Norman: Emotional Design – Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman (2003). Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books. ISBN: 0465051359

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Brenda Laurel (Ed.): Design Research – Methods and Perspectives

Brenda Laurel (Ed.) (2003). Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. MIT Press. ISBN: 0262122634

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Jay David Bolter & Diane Gromala: Windows and Mirrors – Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency

Jay David Bolter & Diane Gromala (2003). Windows and Mirrors : Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency . MIT Press. ISBN: 0262025450

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JoAnn Hackos: Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery

JoAnn Hackos (2002). Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0471085863

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Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville (2002). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition. O'Reilly. ISBN: 0596000359

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Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, & Jason I. Hong: The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience

Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, & Jason I. Hong (2002). The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience. Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 020172149X.

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Clemens Lango: Visuos

The book gives detailed insight into the challenges of knowledgework and hypermedia systems, the status quo of information visualization and interaction concepts and is a detailed documentation of the visuos concept – from conceptual to detail level.
(From the author's Website, adapted)

Clemens Lango (2003). Visuos. Synchron Wissenschaftsverlag der Autoren. ISBN: 3935025467. (not contained in book list)

Ian Graham: A Pattern Language for Web Usability

During the second half of the 1990s software developers were influenced hugely by the work of architectural theorists of the built environment, notably Christopher Alexander and his colleagues. Alexander’s idea of a pattern language for planning, designing and constructing towns and buildings was, among others, taken as the inspiration for catalogs of software design patterns. Recently, some software engineers have gone back to Alexander’s work and realized that pattern catalogs miss the essence of the idea: that the "words" in a language can be combined using its grammar to produce beautiful, useful works.

Current books on Web design are not organized in such a way that they can be accessed quickly as a reference guide to good practice. In addition, many of the principles of good user interface design are only present implicitly in these books. Therefore, this book provides a standard reference pattern language that can be a useful reference and a source of learning on how to design great sites.

There are four aspects of Website design: usability, content, navigation, and aesthetics. The last three all contribute in some way to the first. Therefore the language must address all four issues. The Web usability pattern language presented in this work attempts to meet these requirements.
(From the foreword, adapted)

Ian Graham (2003). A Pattern Language for Web Usability. Addison Wesley. ISBN: 0201788888.

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Ben Schneiderman & Catherine Plaisant: Designing the User Interface (4th Edition)

Ben Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface is a classic and comprehensive textbook on user interface design that has set standards for many years. For the fourth edition, Shneiderman is joined by Catherine Plaisant from the University of Maryland, his colleague of 15 years. The new edition offers new and revised content on Web interfaces, mobile devices, universal usability, and other current trends. A section on new ideas in HCI covers both technological and ethical issues.

Ben Shneiderman & Catherine Plaisant (2003). Designing the User Interface (4th Edition). Pearson Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 0321200586 (Hardcover)

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Mike Kuniavsky: Observing the User Experience

Mike Kuniavsky wrote his book Observing the User Experience because he wants to help user interface designers, developers, and all other people that are engaged in software design "bridge the gap between what they think they know about their users and who they really are." The author sees his book as "a toolbox of techniques that help designers and developers see through the eyes of their users." Part II of the book covers about a dozen different user experience research techniques, such as task analysis, focus groups, usability tests, surveys, log files, and many more. The book concludes with tips on how to communicate the results, and how to create a user-centered corporate culture.

Mike Kuniavsky (2003). Observing the User Experience. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 1558609237

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Dan Woods: Packaged Composite Applications

Dan Woods' book introduces a new breed of software applications, so-called Packaged Composite Applications (PCAs, or xApps in SAP jargon), which offers a new architectural paradigm for integrating and "cutting across the borders" of classical enterprise applications. Although this is not a usability or graphic design book, we present it here because packaged composite applications provide new challenges to user interface designers.

Dan Woods (2003). Packaged Composite Applications. O'Reilly & Associates. ISBN 0596005520. (Not contained in book list)

Alan Cooper & Robert M. Reimann: About Face 2.0

Eight years after publishing the first version of About Face, Alan Cooper, now together with Robert Reimann, presents an update of his best-selling book on user interface design. According to the authors, they rewrote and reorganized every page to accomodate the recent changes, such as the Web and the new emphasis on visual design. In addition, their new book presents more of Cooper's design solutions as well as details on Cooper's goal-directed design methodology, including personas, goals, and scenarios.

Alan Cooper & Robert M. Reimann (2003). About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Design. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0764526413 (Paperback)

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Benjamin B. Bederson & Ben Shneiderman: The Craft of Information Visualization – Readings and Reflections

Information visualization is a rapidly growing field that is emerging from research in human-computer interaction, computer science, graphics, visual design, psychology, and business methods.

The book The Craft of Information Visualization: Readings and Reflections, edited by Ben Bederson and Ben Shneiderman, collects nearly 40 of the key papers on information visualization from the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL), which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2003.

Benjamin B. Bederson & Ben Shneiderman (2003). The Craft of Information Visualization – Readings and Reflections. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1558609156 (Paperback)

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Carolyn Snyder: Paper Prototyping

Carolyn Snyder, now an independent usability consultant at Snyder Consulting, was introduced to the method of paper protoyping at Jared Spool's company User Interface Engineering. In her new book Paper Prototyping she compiled all her experience with this approach and shows how paper prototypes can be used as an (cost-)effective tool in the user-centered design process of software applications.

Carolyn Snyder (2003). Paper Prototyping. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1558608702 (Paperback)

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Ben Shneiderman: Leonardo's Laptop – Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies

In his new book, Ben Shneiderman raises computer users' expectations of what they should get from technology and shifts the focus from what computers can do to what users can do. Using Leonardo da Vinci as inspirational character, Shneiderman explores the computer's potential to support creativity, consensus-seeking, and conflict resolution.

Ben Shneiderman (2002). Leonardo's Laptop – Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262194767 (Hardcover)
Ben Shneiderman (2003). Leonardo's Laptop – Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. The MIT Press. ISBN: ISBN: 0262692996 (Paperback)

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Jeff Johnson: Web Bloopers

Jeff Johnson has become known to a wider audience through his book GUI Bloopers, in which he describes common user interface design sins. His new book Web Bloopers continues on this track and offers a list of 60 common Web design mistakes. The author not only illustrates the mistakes through examples – thankfully, the SAP Design Guild has not been on his radar screen – but also gives advice on how to avoid them. We must admit that we added a statement to the SAP Design Guild home page telling what this site is about (Web blooper 1: home page crisis) after taking a first look at his book....

Jeff Johnson (2003). Web Bloopers. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1558608400 (Paperback)

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