The following is a list of recommended readings from our book:
Isaacs, Ellen & Walendowski, Alan. Designing From Both Sides of the Screen: How Designers and Engineers Can Collaborate to Build Cooperative Technology. New Riders, 2001.

The books and articles we recommend are about different aspects of design and engineering. We prefer practical, well written books over those that teach the ideal goal or are hard to read. There are other books we wish we had read by now, and more are always being written. We'll keep trying to keep up, and as we find new books to recommend, we'll update this list. (If you'd like to recommend a book to us, let us know at bothsides@uidesigns.com).

The Problem

Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday & Company, 1990. Over ten years old, this book still is an excellent summary of why technology is hard to use and how it could be better. It is chock-full of good examples. We recommend it as a good overview of the problem. Cooper, Alan. The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams Publishing, 1999. The first half of this book makes a good case for building cooperative software and the second half describes techniques for doing so, including some excellent examples. The attitude toward engineers is a little too harsh for our tastes, however.

Usability

Nielsen, Jakob. Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann, 1993. This book has a very nice overview of usability principles and the user-centered design process, incorporating many findings from studies and anecdotes from real experiences. It has a very good summary of design principles, which Nielsen calls Usability Heuristics, and summarizes usability testing well.

Understanding Users' Needs

Hackos, JoAnn T. & Redish, Janice C. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. John Wiley & Sons, 1998. This is a complete and interesting book explaining the importance of understanding users, how to conduct site visits, and how to analyze and use that information to design an interface. The authors include many short but useful examples from their real experiences. The book is a bit long, but it's written in a very readable style. Beyer, Hugh & Holtzblatt, Karen. Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. Morgan Kaufmann, 1997. This book provides a nicely written case for observing customers in context with a detailed description of how to do so. The book describes how to get from observations of users' behavior to a UI structure that supports their tasks. We like the authors' sensibilities about interpreting human behavior and the design process. Kelley, Tom. The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from Ideo, America's Leading Design Firm. Doubleday, 2001. In this book, Kelley's gives his inspiring description of how Ideo fosters the creative process. The book explains how they get their ideas for technology solutions -- mainly by observing people in action, accumulating a bag of design tricks, and arranging their organization to keep people's creative juices flowing.

Desktop Software Design

Johnson, Jeff. GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers. Morgan Kaufmann, 2000. This book has an impressive collection of specific "do's" and "don'ts" on a broad range of user interface issues. It focuses mainly on desktop software but it has a chapter on Web design, and many of the concepts apply across multiple platforms. If you have a question about how to handle a UI issue, it's hard to imagine not finding some relevant advice in this book. Spolsky, Joel. User Interface Design for Programmers. APress L. P. 2001. This is a short rant about user interface design from an engineer's perspective, focusing mainly on desktop software. Spolsky is very perceptive, and many of his points are dead on (meaningthat is, we agree with him). We found the style entertaining, but others might find it over-the-top.

Web Design

Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. New Riders Publishing, 2000. A This is a short, insightful, and highly readable book about Web design. Some of the design principles also apply to other technologies (as does the "Don't make me think" rule). This book is fun to read and covers the bulk of what you need to know to create competent Web pages. It also includes a section on the basics of running a usability test. Nielsen, Jakob. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. New Riders Publishing, 1999. In this book, Nielsen offers his opinionated, richly detailed description of good and bad practices when designing Web sites, with hundreds of examples. The book focuses mainly on page design and site design, and not as much on supporting users' tasks as they move through a site.

Design for Devices

Bergman, Eric. Information Appliances and Beyond: Interaction Design for Consumer Products. Morgan Kaufmann, 2000. This is a collection of articles from UI practitioners about their experiences designing various consumer products, including cell phones, PDAs, car navigation systems, toys, and games. We especially recommend Bergman's interview with Rob Haitani of Palm.

Visual Design

Mullet, Kevin & Sano, Darrell. Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques. Prentice Hall, 1994. This excellent book shows how graphic design for user interfaces is about communicating visually. It includes many examples of "before and after" designs so you can see what's better about a good design and learn how to improve a bad design. The explanations are clear and easy to follow.

Development Process

McConnell, Steve. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules. Microsoft Press, 1996. This is a top-notch book on software development that many people consider required reading for software managers or project leads. We especially like the list of 36 "classic mistakes" at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately, the book has little to say about building in a good user experience, but we recommend it on its own terms. Maguire, Steve. Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams. Microsoft Press, 1998. This book has another excellent account of good software engineering practices. It's relatively short and easy reading and is filled with good advice. Again, though, the role of user interface design is woefully ignored.

Networking

Stevens, Richard W. Unix Network Programming, Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI. Prentice Hall, 1998. If you want to understand network programming with sockets and dig into the details of TCP and UDP, this is the book. It covers the APIs and then shows you what happens under the hood. Don't hesitate to pick up any of Stevens's books.

Usability Testing

Dumas, Joseph S. & Redish, Janice C. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. Intellect Books, 1999. The title of this book is right on - [md]it is a practical, no-nonsense guide to usability testing, defined broadly to include many forms of evaluating usability. Engineers might especially like this book because it bases many of its claims on research findings and explains how they authors reached their conclusions. Rubin, Jeffrey. Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. John Wiley & Sons, 1994. This is a detailed description of all facets of conducting a usability test in an easy-to-read style. Rubin does a nice job of explaining the advantages and disadvantages of different techniques. Also see the section on usability testing in Steve Krug's, Don't Make Me Think, (see Web Design books in this appendix), and Jakob Nielsen's description in Usability Engineering (see Usability books).

Usage Studies

Not much is written about the type of usage testing we recommend. Here are some articles about usage studies Ellen conducted with other engineering teams on other systems and how they affected the design. Isaacs, E., Morris, T., and Rodriguez, T.K., 1994. A Forum for Supporting Interactive Presentations to Distributed Audiences, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. ACM Press, 405-416. This paper describes a usage study of Forum, the video-to-the-desktop presentation tool described briefly in Chapter 11. During the study, we conducted 26 talks with the system, each time studying how it was used and iterating on the design based on that feedback. Tang, J.C., Isaacs, E., and Rua, M. 1994. Supporting Distributed Groups with a Montage of Lightweight Images, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. ACM Press, 23-34. This paper describes a usage study of Montage, a desktop video conference system designed for lightweight interaction. During the study, we gave the system to a team of 10 people and studied their use of the system over a span of three months.

Other

Penman, Sharon Kay. The Sunne in Splendour. Ballantine Books, 1990. This historical novel is about 15th-century England and it has nothing to do with designing technology, but it's one of our all-time favorite books. We also loved her Wales trilogy.