15 Recommended Product Design Books

Product Design • July 22nd, 2020

I‘m often asked what my recommendations are for product design books. I typically respond with, “what are you trying to learn?”. These are the books (below) that I find myself re-reading often -the “product design classics”. The books are listed in no particular order and I’ve included a brief description and a link to where you can pick up a copy.

1. A Project Guide to UX Design by Carolyn Chandler and Russ Unger

This is pretty much a cook book for UX projects -all the recipes you’ll need. I picked this up early on in my freelance career and it… made me look like a pro! I would recommend this if you are getting started or just need to brush-up on your UX design skills.

https://www.amazon.com/Project-Guide-Design-experience-designers/dp/0321815386/

2. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

This book is about usability engineering (for the web) and it’s fun to read. After reading this book, I learned to have more empathy for the end user and to say “no” to complicated UI requests.

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515/

3. Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug

Test early, test often, and test on any budget… is what you can expect to learn from this one.

https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Yourself/dp/0321657292/

4. The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

It’s hard to believe the model is 20 years old as I reference The Elements often. For the most part, the same rules still apply.

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-User-Experience-User-Centered-Design/dp/0321683684/

5. Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

Understanding the three pillars of Lean UX will help you manage your time, budget, and resources while conducting UX Design activities.

https://www.amazon.com/Lean-UX-Designing-Great-Products/dp/1491953608/

6. Hooked by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover

Learning the Hook model revolutionized how I approach building products -particularly B2C. Read this book to learn more about how UX works in the brain and how to build habit-forming products.

https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products-ebook/dp/B00LMGLXTS

7. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

Understanding how an object will be used is paramount to understanding how to design it.

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/

8. Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen

Fire-up the time machine, Marty! We’re going to go way back to the year 1993. Believe it or not, I had a desktop computer at home that wasn’t the size of a refrigerator. In this book, you’ll learn about the development lifecycle, basic usability engineering methods, and how to build quality into your work.

https://www.amazon.com/Usability-Engineering-Jakob-Nielsen/dp/0125184069/

9. Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond by Louis Rosenfeld

If you’re not familiar with Rosenfeld, he started one of the most successful UX practices (Rosenfeld Media) in the early 2000’s. He also founded the Information Architecture Institute in 2002. On the streets, he’s known as the Godfather of IA. This book will teach you how to identify who will be using your site, what they’ll be using it for, and how to organize the information to best accommodate users goals.

https://www.amazon.com/Information-Architecture-World-Wide-Web/dp/1565922824/

D10. esign Systems Handbook by Diana Mounter, Marco Suarez, Katie Sylor-Miller, Roy Stanfield, Jina Anne

This book will help you learn best practices around design systems, with insights from lead product designers at Shopify, Google, Apple, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In addition to Amazon, this book is also available (for free) at, https://www.designbetter.co/design-systems-handbook

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Systems-Handbook/dp/B07Z5GLMZB

11. Atomic Design by Brad Frost

Atomic Design covers best practices around creating and maintaining design systems. The book introduces a methodology for thinking of your UI as hierarchies, and discusses how to streamline UI design production.

https://shop.bradfrost.com/

12. Sprint by Jake Knapp

This book will walk you through the five stages of a design sprint: 1) problem framing, 2) understanding the problem, 3) sketching and deciding on a solution, 4)building a prototype, and 5) testing with customers.

https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/150112174X

13. Principles of Product Design by Aarron Walter

This is another free book from DesignBetter.com, https://www.designbetter.co/principles-of-product-design, that will walk you through design thinking and additional product design best practices.

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-of-Product-Design/dp/B07Z5GPZ2S/

14. Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski

This is my go-to guide on mobile web design. After attending my first, An Event Apart, I started reading all of the books, following the authors, and designing mobile first.

https://abookapart.com/collections/books

15. Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter

This is another book from the A List Apart series and another great read. Aaron Walter guides you through how to design for humans with case studies and psychologically-grounded principles.