21 Books Every Modern UI Designer Should Read 2024

It’ll give you the perspective and insights to figure things out on your own. As for its content, “Inspired” is an overview of the product manager’s job with sound advice on how to be good at it. Unfortunately, Cagan starts with the usual – and at this point, extremely boring – examples. I wonder how hard it would be to collect stories from smaller-scale companies and individuals for some diversity in these books.

I was told to read through tons of pages and websites, even though I had prior experience with writing. Using real-world and fun examples, the book offers everything you need to feel comfortable creating landing pages, online portfolios, and more, all in a beautiful package. It doesn’t go into depth on any topic, but it keeps the reader from getting bogged down with too many details. The purpose behind the book is to emphasize the importance of simplicity as well as consistency when coming up with a web design. When designing websites, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that people will actually be using your published work.

100 UI/UX Tips & Tricks by Victor Ponamariov

It encourages readers to step out of their comfort zone as it provides insights into various aspects of product development that they might not have explored before. Klein’s advice on team building is particularly valuable as it recognizes the vital role of a well-coordinated team in the successful development and launch of a product. This book guides readers through the practical aspects of user testing. It highlights the importance of choosing the right participants, crafting effective tasks, and maintaining neutrality during the process. Krug offers a comprehensive roadmap to conduct effective user research.

• Today, the wireframing is used by professional designers to plan the best user experience for the end users.
• While classic design books like Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think are important for developing a holistic understanding of both UX and UI design, you won’t find them on this list.
• „User Friendly“ by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant explores how design principles subtly shape our daily lives and the world around us.

This UX reference manual from Smashing Magazine, a web designer and developer publication, examines 16 common UX tools and techniques for web projects. It also provides guidance on planning UX projects, case studies of real-world UX projects, and checklists to help you pair the right tools with the right jobs. This easy-to-read reference book is packed with useful tips on how to design products and interact with clients. Each design concept includes a description and illustrated example of how it can be applied.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems by Steve Krug

You’ve probably heard of the “80/20 Rule”, “Ockham’s Razor”, “Self-Similarity” and “Storytelling” in design. This book explains 125+ key design principles and concepts with visual examples applied in practice. Understanding how to design UI and web design that converts customers is one of the highest-leverage skills you can learn. This book is a must-read, especially if you’re planning on working on your products or as a freelance web designer. We love it because it’s straight-to-the-point, filled with practical and actionable tips, and covers everything from UI design basics, Figma setup, and individual component best practices.

Atomic Design is your guide to creating design systems that help you ship high-quality, consistent UIs at lightning speed. It breaks down the process of crafting UI into a logical hierarchy, dives into what makes a great pattern library, and shows you how to level up your team’s design and dev workflow. I like that James explains why bad web design is bad and offers an approach to creating user-friendly websites.

Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software

„Designing with the Mind in Mind“ explores perceptual and cognitive psychology and how it can inform effective UI design. It provides insights into human decision-making, hand-eye coordination, ui ux design books color perception, and memory, offering a strong foundation for user-centric design. This book conveys that an abundance of options can lead to decision paralysis and lower user satisfaction.

UI Design Principles is perfect for UX and UI designers who want to improve their UI design skills and create beautiful, usable interfaces, but also helpful for developers who want to improve their design skills. This book also focuses on design processes and tips for freelancers who want to charge more for their work. The Design Manual is an excellent read for UI designers who want to learn Figma best practices and design skills specifically modern app UI design.

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It’s just tightly packed with relevant ideas and actionable tips. The book’s main idea is to keep in touch with your customer by building a regular interviewing practice. Then, you get a nice rundown on how this and other discovery processes should be interpreted, processed, applied, and evaluated.

If you’re looking to level up your UI design and product design skills, we’ve written a separate guide specifically on the best books for modern UI design. Strangers to Ourselves isn’t a book about user experience design, but a deep dive into human psychology and how we think. At the core of great UX design is a deeper understanding of user behavior and psychology and this can influence design. William Lidwell, a Houston-based researcher and university professor, published Universal Principles of Design back in 2003.

The Best UX Design Books for Beginners

Hooked explores how product teams can use variable rewards to make us form powerful habits, even without us realising. According to the book’s author, all good strategies are alike; each bad strategy is bad in its own way. That means you can learn to become a good strategist from Hannibal, Steve Jobs, and Howard Schultz. By tapping into the essence of a situation, understanding what works, and finding hidden potential, anyone can master the art of strategy. In The Humane Interface, he dives deep into making computers more user-friendly and intuitive.

Despite being 20 years old, Universal Principles of Design is still one of the most recommended books on UX design because it focuses on core design principles that create good user experience. It’s a working methodology that helps UX designers, product manager and teams solve huge problems in just five days. When Sprint was published in 2016, it overhauled many dated project management processes in lieu of Google’s faster, smarter approach. Knapp’s goal with this book is to help you design and build better products faster.

How to Design Better UI Components 3.0 is currently for sale for $9 before it increases to $39 which is incredible value. Adrian is also active on X (Twitter) where he shares UI design tutorials and tips. Allows for improved ad effectiveness and measurement through Meta’s Conversions API, ensuring privacy-compliant data sharing. Collects anonymous data on how you navigate and interact, helping us make informed improvements.