UX Planet — Medium | Guy Ligertwood

Question 9: Open your mind with these inspiring books

20 Designers, 20 Weeks, 1 Question Per Week

Learn From twenty experienced designers as we go deep into one question every week.

This week we dig into great non design books.

Previous articles in the series (so far)

Intro Article: Get to know the designers
Question 1: How did you get into design?
Question 2: How your typical work day?
Question 3:What things you wish you knew when you started in design?
Question 4: What are the best ways for you to stay inspired?
Question 5: What do you want to see in my UX design portfolio?
Question 6: 5 important questions you need to be able to answer in the UX interview
Question 7: 5 design books every UX designer should read
Question 8: Imposter syndrome: Your experience with it as a designer and tips to manage it
Question 9: (you’re here) 5 non designer books every UX designer should read

Rewire Your Brain — John Arden
“I haven’t started it yet but it was a gift from a friend who helped me through a dark period in my life and this symbolically is about taking charge and changing my thinking (Charbel)

Simon Pan — Senior Product Designer at Medium, San Francisco, USA

Nationality:

Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• So Good They Can’t Ignore You — Cal Newport
• Linchpin — Seth Godin
• Mindset — Carol S. Dweck
• Banish Your Inner Critic — Denise Jacobs
• Manage Your Day-to-Day — 99U, Jocelyn K. Glei

Where can people follow you?

simonpan.com or on twitter

Andrew Doherty — CEO, Another.ai, Berlin, Germany

Formerly Product Design Manager at Google, Mountain View

Nationality:

Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

I really feel insecure to suggest books that people *should* read, because books are so personal to me and what I extract from them might not resonate with other designers or people in general.

But in the interest of overcoming my insecurity, here are the last 5 books that I really enjoyed for various reasons:

• Become what you are — Alan Watts
• The wisdom of no escape — Pema Chödrön
• Children of time — Adrian Tchaikovsky
• How to create a mind — Ray Kurzweil
• Dune — Frank Herbert

Where can people follow you?

My website or on Medium

Nirissa Govender — Product Designer at Standard Bank, Johannesburg, South Africa

Nationality:

South African 🇿🇦

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Humans of New York — Brandon Stanton
• Thinking with Type — Ellen Lupton
• Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
• Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping — Paco Underhill
• Just Enough Research — Erika Hall

Where can people follow you?

My Linkedin

Adham Dannaway — Senior UI/UX designer, Contract/Freelance, Sydney, Australia

Nationality:

Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
• Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff — Richard Carlson
• Rich Dad Poor Dad — Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Get the Edge — Tony Robbins
• The 4-Hour Workweek — Timothy Ferriss

Where can people follow you?

adhamdannaway.com

Ben Huggins — Sr Interaction Designer, YouTube, San Francisco, USA

Nationality:

American 🇺🇸

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Ego Is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday
• Rework — Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
• Influencer — Joseph Grenny and Kerry Patterson
• Start with Why — Simon Sinek
• Anything You Want — Derek Sivers

Where can people follow you?

hugg.in or I’m @bhuggins on Twitter and Instagram

Chirryl-Lee Ryan (aka Cheech) — Head of Experience Design at Isobar, Hong Kong

Nationality:

Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Fight Club — Chuck Palahniuk
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — Hunter S. Thompson
• Vurt — Jeff Noon
• The Fountainhead — Ayn Rand
• Society Of The Spectacle — Guy Debord

Where can people follow you?

My Linkedin

Charbel Zeaiter — Chief Experience Officer, Academy Xi, Melbourne & Sydney

Nationality:

Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• It — Stephen King
  Terrifying and gorgeous.
• In God’s Name — David Yallop
  Fact/fiction, who knows, but if enjoy being a conspiracy theorist, it’s intense.
• The Power of Now — Ekhart Tolle
  Busy designers need to learn to get present, particularly when holding space for clients and in workshop settings.
• The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday
  Learn to see a lesson in everything.
• Rewire Your Brain — John Arden
  I haven’t started it yet but it was a gift from a friend who helped me through a dark period in my life and this symbolically is about taking charge and changing my thinking.

Where can people follow you?

My Linkedin

Audrey Liu — Director of Product Design at Thumbtack, San Francisco, USA

Nationality:

American 🇺🇸

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Understanding Comics — Scott McCloud
• A More Beautiful Question — Warren Berger
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari
• Ways of Seeing — John Berger
• The Principles of Uncertainty — Maira Kalman

Where can people follow you?

My Twitter

Nick Babich — Development Team Manager, Ring Central, Russia

Nationality:

Russian 🇷🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Getting Real and Rework — Jason Fried and Heinemeier DAvid Hansson (Basecamp)
• Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
• How to Win Friends & Influence People — Dale Carnegie
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
• Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Where can people follow you?

UX Planet, Twitter , Facebook

Paola Mariselli — Product Designer, Facebook, Menlo Park, California, USA

Nationality: Peruvian 🇵🇪

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Ask for It — Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever
• Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader — Linda Hill and Kent Lineback
• The Creativity Challenge — Tanner Christensen
• Make It So — Nathan Shedroff & Christopher Noessel
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams

Where can people follow you?

Twitter or Medium

Kymberlee Ide — Vice President, Experience Design (CX & UX), McCann

Nationality:

Canadian 🇨🇦

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• The Power of Habit — Charles Duhigg
• Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind research and everyday experience — Bruce Goldstein
• Blink: The power of thinking without thinking — Malcolm Gladwell
• The Tipping Point — Malcolm Gladwell
• Influence: The psychology of persuasion — Robert Cialdini

Where can people follow you?

My Linkedin

Alessandro Floridi — UX Manager at Deloitte, Sydney, Australia

Nationality:

Italian 🇮🇹

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Ego is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday
• Fooled by Randomness — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Quiet Mind — John E. Coleman
• Emotional Design — Don Norman
• The Invisible Gorilla — Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons

Where can people follow you?

My Linkedin

Leslie Chicoine — Experience Design and Product Management Consultant, Denver, USA

Nationality:

American 🇺🇸

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities — Jane Jacobs
• The Pattern on the Stone — W. Daniel Hillis
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari (and the second book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
• The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer — Neal Stephenson
• Dandelion Wine: A Novel — Ray Bradbury

Where can people follow you?

My Instagram and Twitter

Buzz Usborne — Product Designer at Help Scout, Sydney, Australia

Nationality:

British 🇬🇧 and recently Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

Being dyslexic, reading is somewhat of a chore — that said, I’ve recently personally benefitted from reading Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan and 20,000 Days and Counting by Robert D. Smith.

Both self-help style books, but with some really practical ways to create a healthy work/life balance — which is important to me. Related, but a bit more of a fun read is Born to Run by Christopher McDougall which I’ve read at least twice.

Finally, I’d recommend dipping into The Monocle Guide To Better Living from Gestalten Press with a coffee for some off-screen inspiration, and Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini just because it’s totally insane.

Where can people follow you?

My work at buzzusborne.com, my Twitter, my writing on Medium and my resume on Linkedin

Kylie Timpani — Senior Designer at Humaan, Perth, Australia

Nationality:

Australian 🇦🇺

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by David Kelley
• Activate Your Brain: How understanding your brain can improve your work and your life
• How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
• The Psychology Book — Nigel C. Benson
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Where can people follow you?

My Twitter and also on my Dribbble for haphazardly timed insights into my work.

Graeme Fulton — Writer, coder, designer at Marvel Gibraltar, UK

Nationality:

British 🇬🇧

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses — Eric Ries.
  Why: shows the importance of MVPs!
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness — Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
  Why: interesting when applied to persuasive design and dark patterns.
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
  Why: Because designing in large companies can come with loads of nonsense, this can help cut through it!
• Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier — B. Joseph Pine II, Kim C. Korn.
  Why: because VR, AR and the multiverse is already here — I wrote an article about it.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
  Why: because you need to have fun with reading, f the system! #bigbrother

Where can people follow you?

My Twitter

Kaiting Huang — Interaction Designer at Google, in Seattle, USA

Nationality:

Taiwanese 🇹🇼

5 non designer books every UX designer should read

About decision making:

• Thinking fast and slow (by Daniel Kahneman):
  Based on decades of research in psychology, this canonical book takes readers on an intelligent exploration of two systems in human minds. System 1 is fast, emotional and intuitive; whereas System 2 is slow, rational and deliberative. I found this book very interesting because it indirectly explains why persuasive technology (or persuasive design or behavioral design) works.

About decision making:

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking — Malcolm Gladwell
  If you find Thinking Fast and Slow too heavy to digest, this book is a great alternative providing insights into how “instinct” (aka System 1 in Thinking Fast and Slow) plays a role in our decision making process.

About systematic thinking and empathy:

• The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise — Allan G Johnson
  This book introduced me the core of sociological concept — — to look at the world as a system, not an aggregation of individuals. For instance, it’s really easy to blame the poor for their laziness; Or attribute government’s corruption to the officials’ greediness. However, this way of thinking ignores the differences between individuals and how they connect to the whole system. This epiphany became a constant reminder for me to think deeper before judging and to always design with the “big picture” in mind.

About relationships:

• How to win friends and influence people — Dale Carnegie
  This book is a classic guidance for interpersonal skills. What I really like about it is that it really elaborates on the right mindset to have, rather than just enforcing superficial “rules”. It demonstrates that likability and authenticity can co-exist!

About realizing your potential:

• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking — Susan Cain
  I’m an introvert, so do many of the designers/developers I know. This book outlines the underestimated power of introverts and encourages people like me to live a rich and authentic life that’s congruent with our temperament.

Where can people follow you?

My Medium

Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
“Why? Because you need to have fun with reading, f the system! (Graeme)

If you enjoyed this…

Read the other articles in this series

Intro Article: Get to know the designers
Question 1: How did you get into design?
Question 2: How your typical work day?
Question 3:What things you wish you knew when you started in design?
Question 4: What are the best ways for you to stay inspired?
Question 5: What do you want to see in my UX design portfolio?
Question 6: 5 important questions you need to be able to answer in the UX interview?
Question 7: 5 design books every UX designer should read
Question 8: Imposter syndrome: Your experience with it as a designer and tips to manage it
Question 9: (you’re here) 5 non designer books every UX designer should read

Thanks for the read, before you go

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5 Non Design Books Every UX Designer Should Read was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.