9 Amazing Books That Go Beyond UX Design
I decided to put this list together after I realised I had read a lot of books (for me) over the past few months. I don’t usually hang onto books I’ve read either, but I noticed I was accumulating a large stack of books with lots of sticky notes in — always a good sign that I got a lot of value from them. So I’ve decided to share some of the books I’ve found that, although not strictly UX books, discuss the foundational topics like human behaviour or key skills UX designers should possess.
These books blew me away. Not only do they offer a new angle on something you might already know, but they completely changed the way I work — plus they’re easy to read which is always a bonus.
A More Beautiful Question : The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas — Warren Berger
I’ve just finished devouring this, and couldn’t recommend it more. I found the entire read captivating. Warren takes a look at how questions are often the catalysts for innovation, and that far too often we start by jumping ahead with a solution in mind without knowing if it addresses the right problem. There are some excellent examples and case studies given that are referred back to throughout the book to show how they go through the “What if” and “why” stages, into the implementation of those ideas in the “how” stage.
I particularly enjoyed the opening story from the 1970’s about college student Van Phillips, a natural athlete that suffered an unfortunate injury whilst water-skiing. After a motorboat propellor severed his left leg, he recovered from the injury only to be given a wooden and foam leg that he despised. It was uncomfortable and clunky. It led him to the ask the question “Why can they put a man on the moon, but we can’t create a prosthetic leg that bends and flexes like a real leg?”. He dedicated his life to answering this question, eventually going on to create the “Cheetah” prosthetic foot, often referred to as a “blade”.
Phillips’ “Cheetah” prosthetic foot revolutionized the industry. It meant that a person with an artificial leg and foot could now run, jump — and even compete on an Olympic level.
Its one of those books where you have an “ah-ha!” moment, and realise you can make some changes in the way you approach your work. It made me think that any design brainstorming session i’m involved in first needs to be preceded by a “Questionstorming” workshop to work out the type of problems the session should be solving.
The Power of Moments — Chip Heath and Dan Heath
An essential read for anyone who is designing experiences, this book changed my whole outlook on what a users journey can look like. The most interesting take-aways are about how an experience is made up of “peaks” and “pits” — moments that are the highs and lows that stay with us. Most businesses seek to even out the ups and downs of a customer’s experience until it is one mediocre plateau, with no redeeming, memorable moments. Chip and Dan argue that this is the wrong approach, and elevating the peak moments and perhaps filling a few of the pits can provide far greater value than a consistently mediocre experience.
I’d heard of the “peak end rule” before, but the examples in this book really cemented my learning on the concept that we remember the peaks and endings of experiences. Think back to your last birthday, your wedding day, or the birth of a child. You remember the key elevated moments of saying “I do” or holding your newborn for the first time. But the ending will have an impact on how you remember this experience, if after your wedding your honeymoon flight is delayed by 12 hours it can make you look back negatively on the whole experience. Conversely if the first night you bring your new born home they sleep through, this can make you remember the day of their birth favourably.
The Heath brothers explain how Disney’s Magic Kingdom are well versed in providing magical “peak” moments that are remembered forever, despite being a pretty standard hotel offering. They achieved the remarkable feat of being the number 3 hotel in the prestigious Beverly Hills area, despite being an almost nondescript place to stay. Luxurious, it is not. But it’s all thanks to some of the memorable peak moments they have created, such as the popsicle hotline — a service that lets you use a poolside phone to get popsicles delivered to you free on a silver platter.
Messy :How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World— Tim Harford
I admit I was drawn into this by the title because I am not known to be the tidiest of creatures. I also love a good book about innovation — which is essentially what some of this book is about — and this didn’t dissapoint on that front either. Tim’s opening gambit cuts straight to the chase, with a fascinating story about the virtuoso pianist Keith Jarrett. As a result of a mix up with the piano to be delivered to the Cologne Opera House for a concert he was to play that night, he ended up with an unplayable piano, where the higher registers required him to stand and punch down on the keys to make a sound. It was also too small for the enormous room, producing a puny sound which again required him to stand and bash the keys to produce a sound big enough to reach the back of the room. Jarrett was handed a mess, but despite this he innovated his way out of it — the recording of the passionate performance he gave went down as one of his best performances, and is now the best-selling solo album in jazz history.
I really enjoyed this book, it taught me that sometimes being less rigid and diverse in your approach to creating experiences can lead to the greatest creative achievements.
Made to Stick — Chip and Dan Heath
Another book from the great Heath brothers exploring how you can get an idea to “stick”. They have an easy to digest writing style, that is fun and thought provoking. Essentially this book is about how you can communicate a point effectively, and use persuasion to make sure your listeners “get” what you are saying.
I read this because I had previously read their first book , The Power Of Moments (see above) and also because I have been trying my hand at public speaking. I wanted to know how I could convey a message that is impactful and memorable. This book really helped, and I found the beginning section on “Why are some ideas so memorable” really useful.
This talks about the 6 key elements: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness , credibility, emotional, and having a story, which enabled me to focus on trying to tick all those boxes whilst creating my talk.
I’d highly recommend this for anyone wanting to give their presentation or article content more weight.
If you want to work out how to cultivate an environment for innovation, inspiration, and creativity, look to the greats. Ed Catmull is one of them. As co-founder of Pixar, he talks about how they have sustained a creative culture at the company, and how this has been integral to them achieving such worldwide box office success. It was Ed’s dream to create the first computer animated movie, and as a young man he created and pioneered the very first digital animation techniques.
I read this book because I have been fascinated about storytelling as a tool for UX practitioners. What better place to start my research than looking to the masters of storytelling and script writing. Every Pixar movie seems to have it’s own unique, magical quality, and I wanted to learn more about how they regularly achieve this. Not only does Ed give an exciting insight into how script writing is approached at Pixar, but he also provides some interesting stories about what has happened when they couldn't get the story to work, or when the process completely derailed.
As a member of a creative team that is always trying to improve our process, this book is a great resource. If you want to have a peek at how creative teams work in such a world leading organisation, then this book is for you.
Deep Work: Rules For Success in a Distracted World — Cal Newport
As someone who is always looking for new ways to get more meaningful work done, I picked up this book in the hope it would show me how I can achieve more by dedicating meaningful chunks of time to focussed work. Most of what he says is just straightforward common sense — you just don’t realise it until you’ve read it.
Cal explains that if we want to achieve anything meaningful, we need to set aside large blocks of uninterrupted time for “deep work”. Without distractions, and regularly. I admit, this is obvious, but what Cal does is gives some advice on what the most common interruptions are, and practical tips on how to avoid them.
Our use of social media, interrupting ourselves with distractions out of habit, and blindly accepting meetings is so ingrained in us, that it can leave little time for the long periods of time we need to get into a task, or “deep work” as Cal has coined.
The biggest take-away I got, was that these interruptions don’t have to be interruptions. For example, we dont have to leave our email clients open all day, but we do. Why not instead dedicate a block of time at either end of the day for responding to emails, rather than feeling forced to interrupt ourselves every five minutes.
I also found that blocking out periods of time in my calendar for dedicated deep work is a game changer, and loved his suggestion for putting the “out of office” on during these blocks of time (even when you’re still in the office!).
In essense this is a book about boosting productivity, and the down side of “shallow” and fragmented work is that we are always task switching, which is the death knell of productivity.
A lot of Cal’s suggestions will be hard to stomach for most modern knowledge workers (close the email client, delete your social media accounts, turn off your phone — or even get rid of it), but as someone who has published many books, and a much higher than average number of academic papers than his peers, it’s clearly a strategy that works.
Field Ethnography: A Manual for Doing Field Anthropology — Paul Kutsche
This book is currently out of print, but I managed to get a second hand copy from Amazon after seeing it was required reading on an anthropology course. I love this book, because rather than a dedicated “how to” guide, it details various ethnographic studies students have done in the past (from small to large scale). This method of learning by example appeals to me, so is probably the reason I got on well with the book.
Paul Kutsche takes a look at how we as humans, can study other humans, where the flaws in this method can occur, and practical approaches to getting the best from field research activities. It goes into detail on one of the most popular ethnographic assignments that students get set, that of “Mapping a block”, where an interesting street or “block” is selected for the student to describe — without judgement, and without neglecting “the empty lot”. It’s all too easy to take what we see for granted, but this book taught me to “look at the familiar as the unfamiliar” — with new eyes.
As a UX Practitioner I found the sections on “Zeros” (the “unsaids”) and observing without judgement (harder than you think) applicable to my daily work, and I’d highly recommend this to anyone doing field research, user testing, user interviews, and any experience design.
I picked up this book after starting out on a gamification project at work. I was keen not to approach implementing anything as a hollow veneer of badges and leaderboards, and so decided to find out what motivates humans, and what the psychological factors behind gamification might be.
Daniel Pink’s book is a veritable treasure trove of information on motivational psychology. Not only did I find it useful for learning about intrinsic motivation (doing it for the love) and extrinsic motivation (doing it for a transactional reward), but also how to cultivate intrinsic motivation.
Drawing on Edward L.Deci’s research into Self Determination Theory, he talks about how giving people autonomy, mastery and purpose over technique, time, tasks and team will always motivate them more than dangling the carrot of a bonus or other prize.
…the true secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world — Daniel H Pink
Pink also describes how designing tasks for people to become engrossed in can be a a big motivational factor too. He takes Csikszentmihalyi’s fantastic research from his book “Flow”, and describes how when flow is achieved there were clear goals, immediate feedback and the task difficulty level was just right (not too hard, not too easy).
Overall, I enjoyed this so much I will probably read this again at a later date. If you’re interested in creating products and services that people find match their own intrinsic motivations, and reward them in the correct way, this is for you.
Seeing What Others Don’t — Gary Klein
I’m currently half way through this book, so I can’t review it fully, but I thought i’d include it as it’s a good source of information if you’re looking to cultivate ways of reaching insights from your UX research.
So far, Gary has discussed his research into finding out how people reach their insights. He shares some of his collection of 120 “insight” stories he has come across over the years, that he refers back to throughout the book that help support his theories in later chapters.
In the first part of the book, Gary categorises these insight stories into: Coincidences, Contradictions, Connections, Curiosities and Creative Desperation. I enjoyed them all, finding them thought provoking and good examples of each category. I particularly enjoyed the one about how two police officers waiting behind an expensive car at traffic lights saw the driver flick their cigarette ash inside the car. This led one of the officers to have “contradiction insight” — would an owner of such an expensive car flick ash inside, or out of the window? As a result they pulled over the car and found it to be a stolen vehicle.
For what is such an intangible and immeasurable subject, Gary manages to relay his findings well, extracting well described meaning.
Well there it is, I hope you found a book you haven't come across before and get some enjoyment out of reading it. If you’ve got any ideas for my next reads, I’d love to hear your suggestions!
