Best books to learn about design

Question

What books do you recommend for a programmer who wants to learn about design?

Every programmer needs to evolve and learn things outside of his specialization. I would like to collect a list of the best material in the field of design for such programmers.

Some guidelines:

• I'm interested both in graphic design (use of whitespace, fonts and colors) and human-computer interaction (usability, accessibility and user experience).
• In-depth books describing specific areas of design are preferred to shallower, more generic ones.
• Assume reader who is not afraid to learn. Design for Dummies books are not what I'm searching for.

Answer 1

Edward Tufte wrote four books you might be interested in.

Answer 2

I read Don't Make Me Think for web design and found it very helpful. I would think many of the concepts would carry over to desktop design as well

Answer 3

Alan Cooper's About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design is one of the big books on UI design.

• Coding Horror: The Three Faces of About Face

Answer 4

I think usability testing and feedback are very important things to base design on. So my suggestion would be Usability Testing and Research

Answer 5

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It's not specifically aimed at programmers, but it has a lot of good general design advice.

Answer 6

Books on HCI that are often recommended:

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
• The Human Interface by Jef Raskin
• About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski

Answer 7

All of the above and add Designing with Web Standards by Jefferey Zeldman to the heap... or stack... Damn, I should have learned C.

Answer 8

Robert Bringhurst's The Element of Typographic Style is an awesome informative handbook about typography.

Answer 9

People are already giving great HCI book recommendations, but a great book for some good fundamental principles of graphic design is The Non-Designer's Design book. The explanations are clear and straightforward and there are lots of full-color pictures demonstrating the principles precisely.

Answer 10

I'd vote for "Designing the obvious" - it's like "Don't make me think" written from the contemporary perspective (age of AJAX etc.) You may also like "GUI Bloopers 2.0" - many common UI mistakes you may not be aware of.

Answer 11

1. Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen
2. the Zen of CSS Design by Shea and Holzschlag

Answer 12

bartekd (who is not yet a member of StackOverflow) recommended me the list of books about usability and user experience on Smashing Magazine.

A lot of the books on this list were already mentioned in answers to my question. Here is the rest:

• Prioritizing Web Usability, Jakob Nielsen
• The Design of Sites. Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites, Douglas Van Duyne, James Landay, Jason Hong
• Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, Dan Saffer
• Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge
• Envisioning Information, Edward R. Tufte

Answer 13

If, as you say, you are not afraid to learn, I would recommend Contexual Design, by Beyer and Holtzblatt. Although published ten years ago, its content is still very valuable, because it centers on how to gather user data and design in accordance. Their method is not for the faint of heart, but a lot of the content will generate ideas across a whole spectrum of real-life situations. At least, that is my experience.

Answer 14

I just read a good book last week. I enjoyed it very much.
Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company

Also, I am a big fan of Universal Principles of Design. It has a unique layout that is very easy to browse.

The others (in this post) are good. Especially The Design of Everyday Things. But don't forget Emotional Design by Norman too.

Answer 15

I would go for Design Web Interfaces by Bill Scott & Theresa Neil