Introduction
When speaking with recent graduates or designers new to the field of software design, we are often asked what books or resources we recommend. What follows is a reading list focused mostly on web application design. While many of these include information that would be generally applicable to any software application I will follow up with another post including resources applicable to other forms of software design.
Because this list could be a bit overwhelming here’s a suggested starting point…
A Starting Point
Start by reading Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.
This is a light, easy read which sets the stage nicely, encouraging a user-centered thought process. It will give you some criteria for evaluating web sites that you visit and therefore help you mimic good design and avoid the bad. You’ll revisit the wisdom of this book for years.
Follow this with the first seven chapters of About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
This builds on the foundation of evaluating design by walking through the Goal-Directed design process and explaining the “how” of creating well-designed products. It will introduce you to the vocabulary and artifacts we use in our process like: implementation & mental models, personas, scenarios, requirements and more.
Then read CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions, Second Edition
This would be a good time to step away from the theory and learn about practical tools. This book is worth reading but will be most helpful if you read it while implementing. Maybe recreate your own website in HTML & CSS as you work through the book? Also be sure to check the web resources under CSS & HTML which would be very helpful as you build.
One point of encouragement — even those of us who have been writing CSS & HTML for 10+ years forget the exact syntax of certain tags and selectors sometimes. You don’t have to memorize everything. You just need to understand the fundamentals and know how to quickly find the answers to your questions as you work.
If you were to read these three books and end by implementing what you’ve learned on a personal project you would have a solid foundation. Of course there will still be much to learn but that’s true for all of us.
We are committed to helping young designers like yourself enter our profession. If you find these things interesting and want to talk about them or want help as you work your way through these resources please do not hesitate to reach out. Any one of us would be more than happy to answer your questions.
Read on for the longer list of resources.
The Fire Hose
Interaction Design
- About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design: Chapters 1-7 are great
- Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web & Mobile Application Design
- Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design
Blogs filled with additional information and resources:
CSS & HTML
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions, Second Edition
Web Resource for Additional information:
One great article that covers the tricky CSS concept of specificity and inheritance is:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/07/css-specificity-and-inheritance/
Decent references for HTML & CSS with some compatibility notes.
http://www.w3schools.com/
A great resource for browser compatibility.
http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html
A nice way to browse the W3C's CSS2 spec directly.
http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/references/css2ref.html
The evolving CSS3 spec.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-roadmap-20010523/
The Safari blog to keep track of what's coming next.
http://webkit.org/blog/
Usability
- Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
- Product Planning Finding the Forest in the Trees
- Story Mapping
Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many books we could add to this list and I’m sure some of you can think of one so essential you can’t believe we left off. Feel free to leave your recommendations below. If we don’t have it in our library yet we’ll most likely add it in short order.
