Recommended Reading

We advocate a multi-step approach toward major societal issues, combining community-driven wisdom with knowledge of domain experts. Add an opportunistic, incremental approach to large problems, followed by continual attention to the fundamental principles of human-centered design.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto Verganti argues that the rule "don't criticize" is flawed. Criticism is good -- it leads to radical innovation. This is an important book for designers: read it!

Books I have read in the past few months: Eleven of them. At the end of the list, I select three (Papanek, Easterly, and Ramalingam) and explain why.

I very much recommend the book. It tells some of the origins of today's design field when designers came from theater and advertising. When they thought big and had lofty ambitions. Szerlip's book makes it clear that Norman Bel Geddes was a brilliant and creative thinker. His $7 million design o...

I am pleased to say that the paper by P.J. Stappers and me on DesignX has been published, along with several commentaries and then a response by the authors. With citation and URL for the package. ...

Mollerup, P. (2015). Simplicity: A matter of design. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: BIS Publishers.I sat down in the living room. I read, turned the pages, read, skimmed, and read again. A long period

The design of human-computer systems used to focus upon the negative, the breakdowns that confused and confounded people. Now it is time to move to the next level, to focus upon the positive, systems that are enjoyable and pleasurable. We need systems that delight as well as inform, systems that...

I am pleased to announce that Diversion Books has released Things That Make Us Smart as an inexpensive eBook: US $4.99. Available in multiple formats, including Kindle, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google (MOBI and EPUB). ...

I am pleased to announce that Diversion Books has released my book of essays, Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles, as an inexpensive eBook: US $4.99. Available in multiple formats, including Kindle, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google (MOBI and EPUB). ...

One way to understand what future events might await us is to develop elaborate, complete scenarios of what life might be like as a result of new designs, inventions, and technologies. It isn't enough to describe the potential technologies: the scenario must illustrate how it might be used in eve...

My Introduction for Dan Ward's book The Simplicity Cycle, but which also includes a description of and a recommendation for his book FIRE. The two books make a powerful package. Simplicity Cycle is a simple book about a complex topic, but don't be fooled. Beneath the simplicity lies a deep and pr...

Brendan Vance, a game developer and blogger, has written a very nice critique of modern games that he calls "The cult of the peacock." But I do disagree with his complaint about the lack of manuals. Few people ever read manuals -- as is well illustrated in Vance's discussion about them. This is...

Judith Donath's thorough, in-depth look at social media is worthy of detailed, careful reading, but it also wonderfully supports opening at random, then reading and pondering. Want examples? Although interacting with people through technology is not as good as actually being with them, sometimes ...

In this valuable traversal of human cognition, Jeff Johnson illuminates its operation and exposes everyday fallacies and misunderstandings through example and explanations. The results provide a useful education for everyone, but one that is essential for designers. If you are curious about the h...

Large projects tend to fail: Software, construction, new aircraft, it doesn't matter -- they fail. Dan Ward offers a simple solution: don't do them. With the time and money allocated for one large project, do numerous small ones. Do them Fast and Inexpensive, with Restraint and Elegance: FIRE. It...

Cool Tools is a cool book. I've wasted, um, enjoyed, many an hour with it. It is a delight to pick up at random times in the day and to randomly open it up and start reading. As Kevin Kelly says: all these items are listed not because you should buy any of them, but because you might enjoy knowi...

A fascinating book revealing the properties of cognition that are manipulated so expertly by magicians to make us believe what they wish us to believe. Learning the tricks only makes them more fascinating. I too have been to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. I've had tricks explained to me in gr...

It is easy to find books proclaiming that the end of the world is herre: machines will take over. In this engaging and provocative book, Clive Thompson argues just the opposite. Yes, machines are getting smarter and more powerful all the time. But they enable us. They add to our creativity. ...

Theatre is about interaction, about themes and conflicts, goals and approaches to those goals, frustration, success, tension, and then the resolution of those tensions. Theatre is dynamic, changing, always in motion. Our modern technologies with their powerful computers, multiple sensors, communi...

Great microinteraction design requires understanding the people who use the product, what they are trying to accomplish, and the steps they need to take. it requires understanding the context of those interactions. It is essential to develop empathy with the user, to develop observational skills ...

Embrace failure, avoid failure: these two, apparently contradictory statements are the opening and closing chapter titles of Victor Lombardi's enchanting, insightful book. Embrace, yet avoid, the apparent contradiction being resolved by recognizing that the trick is to learn from other people's f...

Sloth, Pride, Envy, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony. What? I'm supposed to design for these traits? As a human-centered designer, I should be repelled by the thought of designing for such a list. What was Chris Nodder thinking? What was his publisher thinking? This is evil, amplified. Although, com...

Many people continually ask for my suggestions of readings in design. Here is an excerpt from the "Readings and Notes" section of the 2013 revision and expansion of the book Design of Everyday Things" that provides my list of general books for interaction design. The list of excellent books is mu...

This is a brilliant book, written in a lively, engaging style that gets to the essence of experience design. This book should be required reading for designers: experience designers, human-computer interaction designers, user-interface designers, graphical designers, and industrial designers. It ...

The world of business is company-centered. Powerful Information technologies exist to help companies, CRM being one of the most powerful and popular - CRM for Customer Relationship Management. What if all of this was reversed? What if the customers had all the tools? What if every one of us had o...

An engrossing, important book. This is really three books. For me, the first is the most important, for it spells out clearly and distinctly the arguments that many of us cognitive scientists have been making in the past few years: emotions first, reasoning second. More and more, we are learni...

An enticing ethnographic study of life in a small sample of families in Los Angeles, California. Ethnography offers the advantage of detailed, in-depth examination of everyday life. This book provides a rich analysis of 32 families in Los Angeles, California. When studied, it yields huge insights...

Clayton Christensen, famous for his several books and many articles on disruptive innovation, provided an excerpt from one of his books for the on-line Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. The editor, Mads Soegaard, asked if I would write a commentary. Having long been a fan of Christense...

This is an excellent summary of the latest thinking in the psychology of thought judgment, and decision making, written by one of the foremost scholars in the area. Highly recommended. The book covers a wide range of phenomena, producing very important, counter-intuitive insights to many aspects...

Two books that treat history from a non-European point of view, emphasizing the critical role and world leadership, especially in trade, that Asia played until the 1800s. They should be of interest to everyone, but for designers, they help reinforce the notion that western biases have affected t...

This novel portrays a possible, unfortunate future, where privacy is gone and large search companies and governments can track people's every deed, even if they don't do them. The author, Shumeet Baluja, works at Google, and the startup culture depicted in the opening chapter as well as the life ...

Radical changes in the nature of photography are underway in the research labs all across the world. The first fruits of all this research are about to be released in a product available to everyday photographers. Ren Ng's thesis demonstrates a practical system for taking the photograph now and d...

High recommendations for the Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction now being assembled by Mads Soegaard and the team at Interaction-Design.org. The chapters that are now available are all excellent. In addition, Soegaard sent me the Table of Contents (not available to the public) and the br...

This is a visual exploration of space and design, of the interstices between object and space, of .. well, it is just plain fun. But don't just look at the pictures, tantalizing though they may be. It is the text (by Barry K?tz) that illuminates and penetrates the mystery behind the rendered obje...

The ways in which media are conceived, formed, and distributed have long undergone change, but now they are in full revolution. There is nobody better than Bill Moggridge to shed an illuminating beam upon the people behind these changes: not the technologists, but the writers, artists, musicians,...

A very important book. If you liked Jared Diamond's books, you will definitely like this. It builds upon Diamond's geographical analysis of the growth of civilization, but it goes far beyond, into a cultural history and set of analyses of what is yet to come. This is where the world is moving. R...

A powerful, important book. Eyeglasses made the switch from shameful medical appliance, which is how the British National Health Service labeled them, to revered fashion item, so much so that people who didn't need glasses would wear them anyway. If eyeglasses can do it, why not hearing aids, whe...

Tim Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law school and a fierce defender of Internet neutrality (he invented the term "net neutrality"), has written a great book about the rise and fall of media neutrality throughout American history. Whether it is the early days of motion pictures (when all the film...

Security is a critical element of our lives in this interconnected world of invisible computers and sensors. Moreover, the real security issues are not technical, they are people-centered. We must design better security with attention to how people actually behave, otherwise we all will defeat th...

A fascinating set of stories illustrating how the lack of attention to the needs and capabilities of people can lead technological systems to disaster. Read the book to learn the fascinating stories of what can go wrong once complex systems are deployed without appropriate consideration to the ne...

Why a science fiction book? Because Doctorow is one of those deep thinkers who shed light on the future developments of our society and its technology. Doctorow shows the power of inexpensive 3D printers coupled with reclaimed discarded gadgets. While at it he lampoons mega-corporations, the pro...

A strong argument for a simple, yet powerful tool that can help reduce the incidents of error, accidents, injuries, and deaths: checklists. Extremely successful in commercial aviation, their use in other safety-critical applications is surprisingly controversial. Experts scorned them: "Are you im...

Johnson argues that innovation originally came from independent, market-driven entrepreneurs, but that it is rapidly moving to non market driven innovation, created by networks of workers. As he puts it: "The magic square is ... that of decentralized, non-market environments. This is a combinatio...

Ten reviews of important books (Alphabetical by author) (each has its own entry on my website). Anderson: Security engineering. Cooke & Durso: Stories of modern technology failures and cognitive engineering successes. Doctorow: Makers. Gawande: The checklist manifesto. Johnson: Where good idea...

The more you believe that human-centered design is important, the more you need to read this book. "Want to be radical? Forget user-centered innovation." Hmm, sounds like something I would say, but in this case it isn't me, it is Roberto Verganti, author of "Design-driven innovation." Verga...

Measurement is of critical importance to science, but as Ken Alder shows in this informative book, scientific activities cannot be separated from the personalities of those involved and the political events of the times. Alder is a historian of technology at Northwestern University who writes of ...

Many scientists and tinkerers are driven to discover a machine that will tell us when someone is lying. Unfortunately, many have claimed success, sufficiently so that the machine called a "lie detector" is in common use in police stations, government agencies, and even by some company employment ...

Technology is important to all of us, and it is critical to understand the role it plays in society. Society, culture, human behavior and technology lay a complex intertwined role together, each mutually influencing the other, so the evolution of each is affected by the evolution of the others. ...

The best book on the history of modern design I have read. Thorough, detailed, complete. Covers everything: architecture, products, services, software from the Romans (briefly) to today. I learned tremendously. I first read the book on my electronic book reader (a Kindle) but the many excellent...

Fun and inspirational. When I'm searching for ideas or have a great need to be distracted with interesting, fun, creative ideas, I turn to this book - always conveniently stored by my living room couch - and open up to a random page and read a few pages. Works every time. And it has over 500 page...

I taught a reading course on design to Northwestern's Kellogg MBA students. The most popular book of all was this one: The book by the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, "Made to stick." People were applying the ideas in their class presentations even before they had finished reading it, it was that e...

This engaging book serves several purposes. It explains much of the history, rationale, and politics of standards. It shows why they have huge social impact, far beyond what most of us realize, often far beyond what was intended. And best of all, it is fun to read....

Here is the blurb I wrote for the back cover of this book.  It is already available in the UK and will be relased in the United States in 2009.  Sudjic is the

I am often asked - and I often myself wonder - what research journals I should be reading in the design. here is a short list of ones I find valuable, only one of which (The International Journal of Design) is available on the internet without subscription....

An engaging tale of the product development process, this time following the developments in laptop computers, mostly focusing upon the efforts of the ThinkPad team from Lenovo to develop their lightweight X300 portable. Steve Hamm is a senior writer for Business Week, with good contacts and a go...

Even if you are not a game developer, this book should be part of your arsenal: everything we design, everything we build, should incorporate fun, delight, exploration, and surprise. Our devices become part of our lives, not just virtual worlds, but real worlds. Game developers learn through unde...

For far too many months I have neglected reviewing the many books I have read and enjoyed. So here is a partial catch-up, a long list of books, each with a short review, bringing me roughly up to date as of December 1, 2008....

Yup, people make mistakes all the time. In his engaging book, Joseph Hallinan entertains us while simultaneously informing us. There have been decades of science devoted to understanding real human behavior, much of it buried in the complex terminology of technical journals. Hallinan brings the s...

This is a fun book, demonstrating how just a few simple principles can give approximate answers to puzzling questions. How far does a soccer player run during an average game? How many people are picking their noses right now? And if all the people on earth were crammed together in one place, how...

Anything by Cass Sunstein is required reading. (For example, see Nudge, his book with Rich Thaler, reviewed on this website.) A lawyer at Harvard law School, Sunstein writes wisely about the role of groups in decision making, including the downside as well as the upside .An easy to read book abou...

Vanderbilt covers the myriad aspects of the driving experience. He is a journalist, not a researcher, but for this book, he did his research well, talking with all the major people, uncovering folk lore and scientific lore I never ever heard of, and providing a witty and informative tour of both ...

Groopman, J. E. (2007). How doctors think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Human error, medical error, decision making and appropriate design. Don't think this book is just for the medical profession. Groopman does a superb job of reviewing the modern literature on decision making, problem solving and...

Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Hekkert, P. (Eds.). (2007). Product Experience: perspectives on human-product interaction. Amsterdam: Elsevier. I wrote the preface, so I am obviously biased. This is a big, heavy book (662 pages) with 27 chapters covering the range of experiences that people have wit...

Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Gut feelings: the intelligence of the unconscious. New York: Viking. Gerd Gigerenzer and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin have published a compelling series of books about the roles of simple heuristics, the environment, and now, ...

This is a great book: engaging, informative, and thoroughly delightful. Imagine: deep thoughts in an easy read, with social and legislative suggestions to improve everyone's well being through a constructive, non-coercive (libertarian) social policy. It doesn't matter whether your politics are l...

— This "new" Internet economy isn't that new: it is still governed by the standard economic principles. What is new is the emphasis on such concepts as lock-in, cost of

— An informed, witty essay on how the technology of computer interfaces changes the way we think. After all, it is "Things That Make Us Smart."Pointer to the book at Amazon.

— I always read everything written by Petroski. Erudite essays on everyday things, the pencil, bridges, engineering design, and now bookshelves. In this, his most recent work, a fascinating look at the history of

— Witty, erudite, complete, opinionated. But I happen to agree with the opinions. I have only one regret about this book – jealousy. This is the book I have always wanted to write.Pointer to

— Buildings change throughout their lifetime. This is the best of folk design: keep changing to accommodate life's changes.Pointer to the book at Amazon.com > [http://www.amazon.com/exec/

— I told them not to write it, but they did it anyway. Four weirdoes who seem to think that companies should treat their customers with respect, that software should work, that websites should

— A book often paired with "The invisible Computer" by reviewers: Gershenfeld is a physicist at the MIT Media lab who develops powerful technology and then uses that technology to create a

— In the end, security depends upon people. You can have the most powerful encryption in the world, but the weak link is the systems, procedures, and people who implement them. There is a

— My book "The Invisible Computer" explains the "why" of Information appliances, this one explains the "how." This is an excellent collection of how to do it stories.

— Jakob's latest; vintage Nielsen, with pithy, deep insights into the nature of the web -- writing for it, developing it, using it..Pointer to the book at Amazon.com > [http:

— Take human-centered design principles, especially that of ethnographic field study, and apply it to department stores, shops, and any place where people go to buy. The result is a wonderful treasure house of

— If you liked "The Psychology of Everyday Things, you should love this one. It's about folk design, folk art, folk construction. I pick up the book and read at random,

— An important book, not just about paper but about how people accomplish their work. Here is how I put it on the book jacket: Paper is the old-fashioned technology that refuses to die

— Yet another book for which I wrote the book jacket blurb, but once again, because I truly believe this to be an important study. As I wrote for the book jacket: A revolution

— Many of the original writings that played so significant a role in developing the modern internet and multimedia revolution are reprinted in the truly excellent compilation edited by Packer and Jordan. Many of

— I am biased, but this is the very best book I have yet read on the development of the Information processing industry -- the PC, the Internet, etc. I lived through this era

— Here is what I said about this book for the book jacket blurb: Brenda Laurel's startup company, Purple Moon, failed, but her travails provided powerful learning experiences This engaging book, written

— David Weinberger writes the lively JOHO journal [http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/] on the web. This book consists of deep, provocative reflections on the nature of the internet and what it means to

— Erik Jonsson is a very special person: a retired engineer who has practiced and studied the ways by which people wonder about the world, finding their way -- and losing it. I confess

— Steven Levy is a great science writer. First, he understands both the technical side and the human and social side of our technologies. Second, he has a light, engaging writing style that makes

(If you want to learn about the technology behind behavior-based robots, the text I used to teach myself is Ron Arkin'sBehavior-Based Robots [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262011654/donnormanA/

— A non-technical book by the inventor of behavior-based architectures for robots, an approach that has revolutionized the field. I believe that robots will indeed come to pass; I mean household robots, probably on

Every Chindogu is an almost useless object, but not every almost useless object is a Chindogu. In order to transcend the realms of the merely almost useless, and join the ranks of the

— I stumbled across the book by accident, but I found her treatment fascinating, and in the areas at which I am expert, accurate and informative. In particular, Chapter 3, "Droids" (pp.

I have long preached that anthropological field methods provide the best methodology for truly understanding people and the way they interact with products. Here, finally, is a collection of essays that describe the

OK, so they are pulling our leg, ok, so they aren't really serious, or scientific. Nonetheless, Komar and Melamid demonstrate most convincingly and amusingly why design should not be done by

BJ (yes, that's how he likes to be called) has created an important new discipline: captology -- computers as persuasive technologies. Captology is of vital importance to everyone: the person in

A truly excellent collection of papers about the power and importance of fun, pleasure, and emotion in design. Here is an area in which the European researchers lead the way and this book,

Fun, yet disturbing. Delightful, yet deep....

If I were asked to recommend one book on Industrial Design, this is the one I would pick....

The great surprise of this book was how much it taught me about topics I never expected to find within it: how new products spread (diffusion of innovation), the organization of firms, the differences between the spread of disease and the spread of computer viruses....

A very readable book, and it has just the right emphasis of accident reports, lively-reading incidents, and science, guaranteed to turn you into a convert. We still blame people for accidents, but the culprit is often bad design....

Sidney Dekker has provided us with a delightful book, well written, filled with engaging tales of accidents and the ensuing investigations, but concluding with a helpful guide to the understanding of accidents and the appropriate way to investigate them....

Blink provides an easy to read, reasonably accurate description of the power of subconscious processing. Basically, Gladwell documents the numerous situations where one's instant, subconscious reactions are more accurate than the

An important idea -- that the cortex is a predictive mechanism, always predicting what will happen next. The book is oversimplified (which makes it a quick read), and chapters 7 and 8 should be skipped as overhyped rambling, but Chapter 6 as the potential to be an important restatement of brain o...

Tired of Design as sexy packaging to sell products to people who don't really need them? Try these books as antidotes....

A brilliant book, fun and educational to peruse, and wonderful for training the art of ethnographic observation. This short book is basically all photographs and no text. Indeed, most of the text consists of captions to the figures, and these are all hidden at the back of the book, making it diff...

This is a fascinating book: enjoyable, educational. But if you are a designer, the lessons it teaches are often just the opposite of what you need to know. It isn't relevant to design because it's about art. Art is not supposed to be about order and rationality and things that can be taught, henc...

This is an excellent, readable compilation of work on intelligent automobiles around the world — autos that can drive themselves, almost. The Human Factors sections of this book are the weakest — which is why we need more experts in this domain to get involved. The fault, I hasten to...

This book gets an A+ for creativity, originality, and sheer ingeniousness. But creditability? I give it an <em>I</em>: I for Incomplete. Johnson has put forth a delightful argument that the complexity and richness of modern video games, television shows, and movies require so much active partici...

The subtitle tells all: "100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design." Now that I have had time to study the book more carefully, all I can add to the subtitle is "Yes!" 100 ways, in alphabetical order, each succi...

<p class="MsoNormal">A marvelous, well-illustrated book about the hidden technological infrastructure that keeps our society going. You may not have thought you were interested in these topics, but after reading this book, you will change your mind.</p>...

'm often asked for reading suggestions, especially for references to the literature on Human Factors and Ergonomics. In the past few months, I have been reading chapters of one book that has

Do Asians think differently than Westerners? This important book provides some pretty compelling reasons to think so. In this co-mingled world, where West interacts with East on a continual basis, the more we understand about one another, the better all of us will be. This book is required readin...