Modern user-centered design, for the most part, relies on a handful of core design principles and design patterns that have been studied, tested, and honed over decades. If you can turn studying great user-centered design and improving your UI design skills into a daily habit, the compounding effect over just a year will put you decades ahead of your peers. In a competitive industry, consistently pushing out great user interface design is the easiest way to stand out. Key takeaways from the book are its solid grounding in UX design principles, which can be revisited anytime for insight. Furthermore, the book explores all design aspects to broaden a designer’s perspective in their field and across various design disciplines. This broad-based approach makes it a rich source of inspiration for designers, regardless of their expertise.
The Ultimate Guide to Web Design focuses heavily on the web design process for web design freelancers. We particularly like Practical UI because it was written recently and focuses on modern best practices for UI design and web design. It emphasizes the practical and logical side of UI design, with clear and concise examples of logical rules for creating effective and usable user interfaces design. Even if you’re an experienced UI/UX designer, it can be overwhelming to keep up with design trends, the latest digital products, fancy design tools, and the multidisciplinary nature of product design & UX design. “A Project Guide to UX Design” by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler is an invaluable handbook for UX designers handling the complexity of design projects.
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UI Design Principles by Michael Filipiuk is a 500-page ebook that covers every aspect of modern UI design and fundamental UI design principles such as typography, color, and layout. UI Design Systems Mastery is a UI design and design systems ebook written by Marina Budarina. Marina is well-known in the design community and on Instagram where she shares useful UI design tips and resources.
It’s a platform where professionals share their experiences and lessons learned in the field. UX Design focuses on the user’s journey, ensuring every interaction is as smooth and satisfying as possible. It combines aspects of psychology, business, market research, design, and technology. As a UI/UX designer, staying up-to-date with the latest design trends and techniques is crucial for success in the field. It is not just about aesthetic design but also a critical component of human-computer interaction that influences user behavior, perceptions, and overall satisfaction.
Top 10 UX/UI Design Books and Articles to Elevate Your Skills in 2023
This resource provides a comprehensive analysis of over 300 designs and is a great way to stay updated with the latest trends. This book stands out for its rich, varied examples, easily digestible layout with bolded keywords, and inclusion of humor through comics. Suitable for diverse roles, it remains current, even exploring mobile conventions. Through “The Paradox of Choice,” Schwartz contends that while the abundance of choice may appear beneficial, it often leads to frustration and dissatisfaction.
Müller-Brockmann was the first graphic designer and researcher to introduce the grid system, so this book was quite revolutionary for its time. Anyone who’s into graphic, visual, user interface, and user experience design would benefit from reading it. Refactoring UI packs in all the fundamental design principles behind good modern user interface design in a 218-page book. Because it includes many design examples, it’s a great book to complete in less than 4–5 hours and will become an invaluable resource for good design that you can refer back to. The good news is that fundamental design principles and best practices for UI design and don’t change much!
Books
The Non-Designer’s Design Book has taught hundreds of thousands of people how to make their designs look professional using four surprisingly simple design principles. Alla shares key qualities of well-functioning, enduring design systems and how they can be achieved. This book includes practical examples and case studies from AirBnB, Atlassian, Eurostar, TED, and Sipgate, plus 18 months of research and interviews, to highlight what works and what doesn’t work in real-life digital products. Learning how to integrate modular thinking and design systems into real-life design projects is an essential skill in modern UI design. It becomes even more useful once you start working in larger teams and on more complex digital products and websites.
It encourages the reader to view the world with fresh eyes and adopt an “abundance mentality.” You must treat creativity as a flexible muscle that benefits from regular exercise and teamwork. While the term “UX design” may have been recently coined, the underlying principles date back thousands of years. Don Norman’s seminal work will fundamentally change your perspective on the world around you. Through examining everything from doors to software, Norman reveals the power of good design and the frustration of poor design. The component gallery is a huge resource of 20+ component/layout categories, and 200+ individual component styles. This has always been a huge pain point for us with our own work, so we built the component gallery to solve it.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann
They offer in-depth explanations and examples, allowing learners to gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter. It complements online resources, ui ux design books offering learners a comprehensive education on UI design. Here we picked 20 best UI design books to help you accelerate your learning process.
- “Build Better Products” offers a comprehensive guide for all aspects of product development.
- The book is highly recommended as a reference book and for everyone looking for a real-life solution when stuck during a project, it might be the one.
- In Digital Design Essentials, he goes through 100 design tips through real-life examples, case studies, and more, discussing how to create user friendly and accessible user experiences and interfaces.
- Despite being short and concise, it prompts thoughtful reflections and questions about design research methodologies.
It also provides useful tips for writing user manuals and understanding the significance of “alt” text. The Interaction Design Foundation’s comprehensive guide covers the fundamental aspects of UX design. Over nine chapters, readers can learn about conducting user interviews, design thinking, interaction design, mobile UX design, usability, UX research, and more. This book isn’t filled with complex theories but rather arms you with practical solutions for real-world UI design dilemmas.
Designing Interfaces – Jennifer Tidwell
If you understand how people think, you can make your designs better by focusing on what users need, not just what they want. “Lean UX” covers principles, tactics and techniques to incorporate design into Agile teams. It underscores the importance of collaborative projects focusing on solving user problems instead of merely adding new features. Gothelf’s work encourages you to reflect on your role within the organization and the overall UX strategy. “User Friendly” by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant explores how design principles subtly shape our daily lives and the world around us. The authors weave a historical narrative and chart the evolution of user-experience design from a niche concept to a universal reality in our digital age.
By utilizing these resources, you can elevate your skills, stay ahead in the industry, and create products that resonate with users. We’ve written this guide to focus specifically on the best books for modern UI design. If you’re interested in learning more about UX design (UX research, usability testing, psychology etc.), check out our list of the best books to learn UX design in 2024. This book provides a deeper understanding of the three Ps (principles, patterns, and processes) and the invaluable addition of the fourth P – practice. Cooper’s insights into team dynamics and the unique roles of “generators” and “synthesizers” in design teams offer readers valuable guidance on creating and managing successful UX design teams.
He illustrates the outcomes of adhering to or straying from this user-focused approach through detailed examples. UX design shapes the user experience and determines the success of businesses in this connected era. If you need an idea for a pricing page layout, the idea is that you’d browse the component gallery to find one you like, then combine that with what you learn from the book to create a great-looking design yourself. They focus so much on high level principles like color theory and typography which, while important, never helped me make instant improvements like the actionable, specific tactics I was picking up from Steve. As reported by Forrester Research, a well-designed user interface can increase a website’s conversion rate by up to 200%. It effectively marries theory and practice, making it an indispensable resource for anyone involved in digital design.
