As an avid reader myself, I love to recommend books on design. Below you’ll find a few reading lists I’ve put together, which I share with both my peers and more junior designers
Please note: context influences how we experience books so your mileage may vary. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads. Finally, before we dive in, note that some of the links below are affiliate links.
Get Into UX: A foolproof guide to getting your first user experience job
If you’re completely new to UX, you may want to start with my own book about landing your first UX job.
While it’s mostly designed to help your job search, I cover the UX basics at the start, including differences between key methodologies.
The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond
Amazon
One of the most important books to start anyone’s journey into the world of user experience.
The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide
Amazon
A must-read for being an effective UX designer with useful advice whether or not you’re actually a team of one.
Just Enough Research
Amazon
A primer for design and user research methods. Better yet, it will help you build an understanding of what makes research good and actionable, and more importantly when you know enough to proceed further.
Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Amazon
One of the most important books to get started in UX covers the fundamentals of making usable products.
Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value Through Journeys, Blueprints and Diagrams
Amazon
Assessing the as-is user experience is the bread & butter of UX designers everywhere. This book doesn’t just walk through the different types of experience maps and how to create them, but it will also explain how to use your mapping to inform overall strategy.
Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems
Amazon | Bookshop
There’s more to UX research than just surveys, interviews and A/B testing. This is a great handbook explaining over 100 research techniques, from diary studies to flexible modelling and generative research.
Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design
Amazon
One of the first books on design that I’ve ever read and is still one of the primary reads that I recommend to anyone who wants to develop their e2e design skills, starting with a good grasp of a principle-level design.
The Design of Everyday Things
Amazon | Bookshop
A classic design book by Don ‘The Don’ Norman. Featuring examples of everyday items that are designed poorly or notably well, this book will inspire you to design usable products.
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
Service Design: From Insight to Implementation
Amazon
A combination of best practices and real-life examples to help any designer who’s just starting out or already working in service design.
Ends
Amazon
Tying back to the global problem of waste—from storing emails that will never get read to phones and computers thrown into landfill—this book makes the argument that designers can make a difference by considering and designing offboarding user experiences.
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
Do the Work
Amazon | Bookshop
Any book by Steven Pressfield is an amazing book. It doesn’t matter what your work is—whether you’re a designer, developer or a manager—this book will help you. It’s about how to keep showing up after that initial spark of motivation fades. You’ll learn methods to help you sit down and do it anyway and—as I often discover myself—find that missing spark of motivation in the doing of the thing.
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
Amazon | Bookshop
If you often feel overwhelmed or you’re frustrated with a lack of progress towards your big life goals, then this book should be your next read. It’s both a convincing argument for prioritisation and also a framework for how to approach it, whether it’s your personal to-dos or prioritising UX tasks and activities.
Forever Employable
Amazon
This small book will make you think beyond the job. It’ll inspire you to design your career so you’re not just learning skills, but you’re also helping other people learn and develop those skills.
Skin in The Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Amazon | Bookshop
You want your leaders or managers to have skin in the game. This book is ultimately about the importance of trusting other people and yourself when you’re part of a team or a bigger issue. You’ll understand what is enough skin in the game from economics to politics to personal leadership
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas In Just Five Days
Amazon | Bookshop
The quintessential book on running design sprints, from the team at Google Ventures. Design sprints can be a great tool for distributing design thinking in a multidisciplinary team but, like with any tool, consider if they are right for your situation rather than using them just because of hype. If you’re not sure whether design sprints are the right tool for you to use, I explain the difference between UX, design thinking and design sprints here.
This book is helpful for beginners but it’s also quite dogmatic. Know that it doesn’t have to be this way. In my video about getting started with design sprints (which you should check out after reading the book), I give an example of how my team and I adapted the 5-day process.
Lastly, make sure to also check out my video about the one tool to run better design sprints or any other kind of UX workshop.
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Amazon
A collection of principles, strategies, and techniques to unlock your creativity and thinking outside the box.
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience
Amazon | Bookshop
Effective design communication is 80% awareness and 20% awesome designs. Being able to explain and stand-by your design decisions is key to being able to work on multidisciplinary product teams.
This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better
Amazon
Useful not just for your day job, but everyday life as well. Very practical advice to make your writing more effective.
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
Outcomes Over Output
Amazon
Another tiny book about the importance of focusing our work on an outcome (e.g. improving user retention by X%) rather than output (launching X feature). Some good examples here to help you define better outcomes.
Escaping the Build Trap
Amazon | Bookshop
While this book is primarily about the ROI of product management, it features great examples of building features for user and business value, rather than because a stakeholder told you to do it. Recommended to any designers who also take on elements of product management in their role or want to move into that field.
Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking: What You Really Need to Know to Build High-Performing Digital Product Teams
Amazon
A tiny but mighty book. Whether you’re a UX designer, user researcher, product manager or even a developer… you should read it. I talk about it in more detail in my video comparing lean, agile and design thinking.
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
Amazon
A goldmine of insights that will double your knowledge and effectiveness if you’re new to design.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Amazon
Why do people behave as they are behaving in day-to-day scenarios? This book is a great introduction to attitudes and behaviours: what people say they do and what they actually do.
Bottlenecks: Aligning UX Design with User Psychology
Amazon
A must-have for anyone building a digital product. This book includes key insights from psychology and behavioural economics told through real-life examples. Learn from the mistakes of others… and all that.
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
Amazon | Bookshop
Every experience we design is a multitude of user touch points. The beauty of this book is how clear it makes that you don’t have to (and will rarely be able to) perfect every touch point. You just need to discover which ones are most meaningful for your user to have a good experience and optimise for them.
These are just a few handpicked examples. For more reads, both good and bad, connect with me on Goodreads.
More recommendations
10 Books for (Future) Design Leaders
10 More Book Recommendations (With Takeaways) for UX Design Leaders