Top 5 Books | Work

This is not intended to be a comprehensive HCI bibliography. Plenty of bibliographies already exist elsewhere, with Gary Perlman's HCI Bibliography leading the pack. Also, the HCI Index contains pointers to various recommended reading lists on its Books page.

My list was developed in response to being occasionally asked to recommend books, usually to someone with an interest in the field, or someone just starting. I think of my list in two ways. One is what are the top five books that I recommend to someone starting out. The other way I think of it is what are the top five books that everyone in the field should have read. I have a bias towards design, as opposed to evaluation, and my list reflects that.

Here they are:

The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman

Start here. Period. You have to start here. Norman's book is the essential starting place to raise your awareness of design. Good design, bad design, how we interact with design, how everything is designed, or how everything should be designed.

Usability Engineering, Jakob Nielsen

This is a classic text and summary of the usability engineering field, written when just enough had been figured out to enable it to come together in one book. It covers defining and measuring usability, usability heuristics, usability testing, and more.

Bringing Design to Software, Terry Winograd (editor)

This book is a diverse collection of essays that reflect on the software design process. Some are by people you probably have never heard of before. Some are by the obvious who should contribute to an effort like this (Don Norman, for example). Mitch Kapor's "Software Design Manifesto" is worth the price of admission alone.

Reader's Choice! Either:
About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design, Alan Cooper
or
The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, Alan Cooper

I love Alan Cooper's writings. Be forewarned, however, that he writes in a style that can rub some people the wrong way. But I think the HCI field needs someone like Alan who is bold and blunt.

About Face contains two types of ideas, tactical and strategic. Tactical ideas are rules of thumb and guidelines. These are much the same as you can find in any number of user interface design books and style guides. Strategic ideas, however, are ways of thinking about user interfaces that are broader and deeper. I like to think of it this way: tactical ideas are like building codes, while strategic ideas are like architectural concepts. Building codes tell us to construct studs every 16 inches on center. Architectural concepts tell us we are building a modern victorian home. We have a plethora of building codes in user interface design today. We are sorely lacking architectural concepts, or as Cooper calls them, strategic ideas. While I don't agree with all of Cooper's strategic ideas, I applaud his efforts to try to develop them.

Inmates isn't the book you want to give to a difficult software engineer whom you are trying to convert, unless you are trying to create an enemy. But Cooper's primary point of view is hard to deny or refute -- most of our software development processes aren't resulting in products that make people more effective or happier. This book is probably best known and remembered for its description of how to use personas in the design process.

Designing From Both Sides of the Screen, Ellen Isaacs & Alan Walendowski

Published in December, 2001, this is the newest book on my list. I love this book, and it made my list before I was even half way through reading it. It's not that there are any revolutionary or new concepts in this book, but what it does do uniquely is to describe the design process from the perspectives of both a user interface designer and a software engineer. Using a real life case study, it shows how the design process is one of cooperation and relationship. Ellen and Alan earn extra bonus points for setting up a nice web site in support of the book.

There you have it -- my top five books (even if there really are six). Do you have an alternative top five? If so, drop me a line. What's missing from my list? What would you throw off of my list? What's your list?

Oh, heck, I can't resist the temptation to add one more. Call it an honorable mention:

Designing Visual Interfaces, Kevin Mullet & Darrell Sano

This book is an excellent discussion of user interface design from a visual design perspective. It's full of examples, good and bad, before and after. It introduces visual design concepts in a clear and easy to understand format, and includes the best description of using grids that I've seen yet.