Interaction Design Books

by October 22, 2006

There are a number of new books published (and soon to be published) about Interaction Design. Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve come across recently:

Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge

Bill Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer and a founder of the design firm IDEO, tells us stories (in the form of interviews) from an industry insider’s viewpoint, tracing the evolution of ideas from inspiration to outcome.


Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices by Dan Saffer

Saffer gives an overview of the history, current practice, and the future of the rapidly evolving discipline of interaction design.


Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell

Designing Interfaces captures interaction design best practices as design patterns: solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand with a variety of examples.


About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design By Alan Cooper & Robert Reimann

The examples in About Face 2.0 are updated to reflect the latest advances in interaction design, as well as principles specifically addressing Web and handheld platforms.


Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology by Jonas Löwgren, Erik Stolterman

The authors of Thoughtful Interaction Design go beyond the usual technical concerns of usability and usefulness to consider interaction design from a design perspective.


Analog In, Digital Out: Brendan Dawes on Interaction Design by Brendan Dawes

Dawes shares both the techniques he has created and the key lessons he has learned in design: why comfort is the enemy of creativity; how mistakes can be celebrated instead of feared, and how to strip design to its purest and most powerful forms.


Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr.

Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application designs such as: building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity.


Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko

A book about Interaction Design theory that deals with issues like linguistics, and metaphor, and the relationships between theory and practice.

Two other recent books that are not as focused on Interaction Design, but are related nonetheless:

Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown

From usability reports to project plans, content maps, flow charts, wireframes, site maps, and more, each chapter includes a contents checklist, presentation strategy, maintenance strategy, a description of the development process and the deliverable's impact on the project, and more.


Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few

This book will teach you the visual design skills you need to create dashboards (uniquely powerful tools for communicating important information at a glance) that communicate clearly, rapidly, and compellingly.