I get asked pretty frequently to recommend books about usability. I figured it would be easier to just post my list online where I can update it and share it easily. Most of you will want to skip this.

In no particular order:

• “Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research
  Extremely informative and a pleasure to read, I highly recommend this book.

  Somehow Mike Kuniavsky has managed to capture all the useful information of an academic text on User Observation techniques without the typical dry and boring tone.

  Every important observation technique is covered and covered well. I can flip the book to a chapter on a technique I have never used, read it, and feel confident that I can employ that technique.

• ”Don’t Make Me Think : A Common Sense Approach to the Web (2nd Edition)“
  Just as it says, a very common sense approach to usability. A lot of basic guidelines that will help you make better websites, and also some tips for running your own usability tests.

  I haven’t read the second edition yet, but Amazon says, ”With a fresh perspective, Steve returns to the principles covered in the first edition to reflect on them anew–commenting, amending, amplifying, reconsidering and offering new examples to emphasize their relevance. The book also includes a new preface and covers accessibility and Cascading Style Sheets for the first time.“

  
  

• ”Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications“ (Bob Baxley)
  ”Making the Web Work is one of the first books to discuss in detail the unique challenges and issues involved in designing Web-based applications and services. The book tackles this subject on three levels by describing a structured method for prioritizing and categorizing individual design decisions, by offering a detailed analysis of various design options, and by documenting established Web interface conventions.“

  Individual chapters focus on conceptual modeling, task flow, information architecture, navigation, form design, online help, and visual design for Web applications. The book concludes with an in-depth analysis of two well-known consumer applications, Amazon.com and Ofoto.

  
  

• “Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design” (Jenifer Tidwell)

  A great book on interface design patterns. Basically a big catalog of different ways of designing your UI elements and their pros and cons. Very good book.

  
  

• ”Sensation & Perception“ (Stanley Coren, Lawrence M. Ward, James T. Enns)
  This is an updated version of the text I used in my Sensation and Perception class at BYU. Dr. Brown is a fantastic teacher, take his class if you can. This book will give you a great overview how human perception works. The section on Gestalt principles is worth the price of the book. I use those principles on a daily basis.

  ”This highly acclaimed book provides a theoretically balanced introduction to the study of basic physiology and sensory responses. The authors survey a broad range of topics and present different theories and perspectives in controversial areas. * Demonstrations allow the reader to experience many of the perceptual phenomena firsthand using common household items or illustrations in the book. * Describes natural instances of perceptual phenomena to bring the subject matter to life.“

• ”Defensive Design for the Web : How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points (Voices That Matter)“
  Your users, now matter how carefully you create your site, are going to run into form errors, 0 search results, missing pages, etc. The boys from 37signals.com will tell you how to avoid many of those problems, and how to recover gracefully when they occur.

  
  

• ”About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design“ (Alan Cooper, Robert M. Reimann)
  I can’t say this book is a pleasure to read, but it covers interaction design very well. You will learn about user research, personas, process, and design guidelines. I felt like I was slogging though it, but it was worth it.

  Updated to version 3.0. Haven’t read the new one, but I would get it instead.

  
  

• ”The Design of Everyday Things“ (Donald A. Norman)
  A quick and fun read. Less about giving you guidelines, though there are a few, and more about sensitizing you to the poor design that surrounds us.

  This book first introduced me to the concept of affordances, though the Sensation and Perception book covers affordances from the academic viewpoint of the originator of the concept, J.J. Gibson.

• ”Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces“ (Carolyn Snyder)
  I don’t actually own this book, though it is in my wishlist. I do paper prototyping fairly frequently and this looks like a good resource.