Design Books
Collection of books i've found useful, and wish i had had when starting in design. This part is very much work in progress, i'm adding more books and reviews as I go.
Must-read books for junior designer [1]
Must-read books for a mid-level designer [2]
- Good Services
- Discussing design
- The Design of Everyday things
- Elements of user experience
- About face
- This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World
- This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases
- This Is Service Design Methods: A Companion to This Is Service Design Doing
Must-read books for a mid-level programmers[2:1]
Must-read books for a senior designer [3]
- Ruined by design
- Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
- Things that make us smart
- The design of future things
- Living with complexity
- Design engineering handbook
- Business Thinking for Designers
Must-read books for design leaders [4]
- Org Design for Design Orgs
- Testing Business ideas
- Thinking in systems: A Primer
- Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
Coffee table books for designers
For introducing design to a front-end developers
For introducing design to a manager or product owner
Recommended for UX designers
- Ends.: Why we overlook endings for humans, products, services and digital. And why we shouldn’t.
- Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- Design leadership handbook is an mediocre introduction to aspects of design leadership.
Communication
- Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values
- Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
Recently published
Individual contributors who are focused on learning the skills of their specialty. Needs coaching for their craft. ↩︎
Strong individual contributor, who know their craft. Needs coaching for larger organizational politics and collaborating with adjanced crafts. ↩︎ ↩︎
Strong individual contributor, who can coach others in their craft. ↩︎
Were strong individual contributors. Can provide coaching on their specialty craft and collaboration with adjanced crafts. Is learning to lead people, projects and grow design culture and organization design maturity. ↩︎