10 UI UX Design books Refine your craft, upgrade your skills by Luda Boss

The authors share inspiring stories from their work at IDEO and teach you how to leverage everyday annoyances as design opportunities. This book conveys that an abundance of options can lead to decision paralysis and lower user satisfaction. It suggests that « good enough » often trumps the « absolute best. » « The Paradox of Choice » urges you to create experiences that satisfy users’ needs rather than overwhelm them with excessive choices.

These books have been kindly shared by the community, with lessons learned by authors for everybody to read and benefit from. A sincere, enormous thank-you to the authors for making their work available to everyone for free. Giles Colborne presents four strategies (remove, hide, ui ux design books organize and displace) to achieve this simplicity. The book emphasizes that products that are the simplest to use often win customers. The SVGs are pre-optimized, and the colors can easily be customized to fit your branding with just CSS — no design tool knowledge required.

Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules Will Help You Design Better Interfaces

It covers various skills, from understanding stakeholders’ roles to conducting user research to SEO and persona creation. It’ll provide practical knowledge of various UX methods and techniques, and insights into modern UX design trends. Nodder’s work unravels the psychological aspects used in persuasive design techniques.

Now Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. If you come across any other useful books for UI design that should included on this list, let us know! Design Systems is all about treating your creative process methodically and assuring that you and your team will get all of the advantages of using a design system. The Visual History of Type by Paul McNeil was originally published in 2017 and traces the evolution of typeface design over the last 200 years. It’s a fascinating read, but also a great primer on typography and how typefaces and fonts are designed and used in modern design.

Untitled UI Icons

The book, component gallery, color palettes, and font recommendations are PDFs, the screencasts are downloadable mp4 files, and the icons are SVG. We hate books that repeat the same ideas over and over just to fill out the page count. This book is written a lot like our blog posts — every sentence is highlight-worthy.

Starting your UX design journey may seem intimidating, but these carefully selected beginner UX books will guide you from novice to skilled beginner in no time. But the more time we put into planning it, the more we realized that we had an opportunity to create something better than that. Something that wasn’t just a book, but more like a complete survival kit for designing for the web. UI is Communication by Everett N McKay is a fantastic 378-page book originally published in 2013. The book aims to help designers gain practical knowledge through case studies that will teach them how to tackle design issues they frequently encounter.

Browse UX / UI Design Topics

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design form the foundation of any digital product. They not only make applications attractive but also contribute to smooth navigation and increased user engagement. To stay ahead of the curve, designers and developers should continuously learn from the best sources available.

This e-book, published in 2009, offers timeless insights into the world of UX design. It contains anecdotes and advice from 42 UX professionals and provides a holistic view of the field. Compiled by UXPin, this bundle contains three e-books covering web and mobile UI design trends.

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf with Josh Seiden

Its lessons prepare you to innovate, adapt, and create exceptional user experiences. The key takeaway from this book is that understanding human psychological constraints is crucial for effective UX design. This book explains how to align digital designs with inherent bottlenecks in human nature.

Steve Krug presents a common-sense approach to mobile and web usability with his engaging writing style. He focuses on functional aspects of design rather than form, offering concrete examples to improve usability and enhance the user experience. The advice and design processes introduced in this book are still applicable and have had a huge impact on our design process, design patterns, and even how we’re designing interfaces and working with components inside Figma today. Design Systems by Alla Kholmatova is an in-depth primer on modern design systems and how they can be used effectively to empower teams to create great digital products. If you’re looking to improve your UI design and web design skills, mastering good typography is one of the highest-leverage design skills you can focus on.

You’ve probably heard of the “80/20 Rule”, “Ockham’s Razor”, “Self-Similarity” and “Storytelling” in design. This book explains 125+ key design principles and concepts with visual examples applied in practice. Universal Principles of Design was first published in 2003 by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler, making it one of the oldest books on this list. This is essentially a book on what makes good design in everyday things — the crossway between design, behaviour and psychology.

• In “The Elements of User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett, readers are provided with a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing user-centered design principles.
• Regardless if you’re new to UI UX design or a professional product designer, there’s always room to learn and improve your design process and design skills.
• Weinschenk, a behavioral psychologist, offers a practical guide for understanding human behavior and applying that knowledge to design compelling and user-friendly experiences.

In “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman, readers are taken on a journey into the fundamental principles of design that influence our daily interactions with objects. Norman delves into the psychology of design, shedding light on how people interact with and perceive everyday items. Through insightful anecdotes and real-world examples, he illustrates the importance of user-centered design, emphasizing the impact of well-crafted design on usability and user experience. With a keen focus on the relationship between humans and the objects they use, Norman’s book remains a timeless guide for designers and enthusiasts seeking to understand the intricacies of user-friendly and effective design. Even with all these incredible design books, you’d be surprised how few UI designers and web designers have a grasp of basic user interface design principles like visual hierarchy, typography, color theory, and web usability. The reality is that most designers don’t read books and don’t actively strive to improve their design skills systematically.

Simply put, these five layers define the rules that a product must follow to create a positive user experience, from conception to the end product. User interface (UI) serves as the crucial bridge between users and these digital products, thus greatly shaping how we interact with technology in nearly every aspect of our lives. Whether we’re browsing websites or navigating mobile apps, UI design plays an crucial role in enhancing user experience and facilitating smooth and efficient interaction with digital products. It’s a great book because it also includes multiple examples, case studies, and methods that can help the reader understand how to develop their design thinking and design process. You’ll learn how to create designs by following straightforward design rules instead of just relying on intuition — it can take you only so far. UI Design Systems Mastery is written for both beginner and experienced designers looking to master the fundamentals of UI design.