13 inspiring books for product design in 2021
The pandemic has certainly changed our busy life and also the way we spend our free time. Some are seen picking up stitching again after years, others are surfing in the living room for real and I’m sure some returned to their favorite books, like I did. As someone who is regularly designing products I’ve found myself often crawl back to the same books from the collection I’ve hoarded over the years, so I’ve decided to create my very own selection for the good and share what I like about them.
I hope dear reader whether you’re a developer, designer, product owner or someone just generally interested in product design you’ll find a book in this list which will be part of your library in the near future too and you’ll proudly share with me your list later. Happy reading! 📚
Dieter Rams — Ten Principles for Good Design
While there’s certainly no shortage of books on Dieter Rams, this one is different. This edition is not just about the German legend’s life and aesthetic mantra that continues to inspire designers worldwide, but also an ode to minimalistic design approach in general.
I often find this book as an escape from our noisy notification-driven digital life and find piece in the quiet, confident layout designs of Rams’ with the showcasing imagery of his legendary 100 items. Of course, you can find the classics like the famous coffee grinder, but there are some lesser-known items like shelving systems and cigarette lighters as well, which makes this book unique.
Andrew Couldwell — Laying the Foundations
Great read if you’re building a design system for the first time or the tenth. Couldwell goes over all the parts of building, communicating, and maintaining a proper system and provides real-life examples of how he brought systemized thinking to the handful of organizations over the years.
Head over to Andrew’s awesome blog and showcase of his work, simply remarkable.
Austin Kleon — Steal Like an Artist
These kind of books are like good candy. It’s a quick read that you can finish in one sitting, but the ideas and advice it contains will stay with you long after you’ve put it down. Some of Austin’s suggestions will validate what you’re already doing, some will challenge you to fundamentally change a creative practice, others will inspire you to grab a notebook and get to work immediately.
Because it’s such a small and accessible book, you’ll want to go back to it from time to time. As you change and grow as an artist, it reveals new ideas and inspirations to you that you may have missed on a previous read.
Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda, Alan Smith —
Value Proposition Design
I remember how much I’ve struggled with my first few products to synthesize the information about potential ideas. What is the actual problem? How can I grab the market’s attention? The insights were all over the place in Google docs and notes, but I could hardly build on them as they were so scattered and not very well connected.
Strategyzer’s book helped me to put all this into an actionable framework, which I could follow step-by-step to have a clearer picture for designing my products. This book not only used the important aspects of jobs to be done, pains and gains from disruptive innovation literature but integrated it with experiments and lean startup in a very simple and clear way.
It’s best to read with companion of the Business Model Generation from the authors as well.
Nir Eyal — Hooked
After this book you’ll never see and design digital products the same way. In particular, I like the directives at the end of each chapter driving you to think about your own product, how you can use the Hooked principles to improve its stickiness. Also liked the Bible case study he added, though I think he should’ve made the analysis more rigorously follow the principles.
All in all Nir’s book is really well organized and written (as so as his blog). Coherent, presented clearly and actionable. He also has an accompanying Skillshare course around the topic, if you prefer to slurp in the knowledge
that way.
Chris Guillebellau — Side Hustle
Recently a friend of mine was asking for inspiration to earn some extra bucks on the side and I wasn’t hesitating to recommend this book to him. Although the title sounds cheesy, Chris’ narrative with the examples and how-tos truly help you think about a business idea and test it within a short period of time (even if it’s not 27 days exactly) focusing on feasibility, profitability and persuasion. Feels like magic after reading and also that you’ve accomplished something gives you a power up to stand up again with a new idea or just continue with the same.
Don Norman — The Design of Everyday Things
After reading this you will never look at any man-made object the same. You will question everything from doors to tea kettles to the most sophisticated computer program. The next time you fumble with an answering machine, web page, or light switch you will think back to the lessons from this book. It is almost liberating once you can see beyond the design of everyday things.
Steve Krug — Don’t Make Me Think (revisited)
This book is a gem, period. I re-read this book multiple times a year and it’s largely due to the fact that Steve Krug makes the topic of web usability genuinely entertaining. He holds a light writing style with a touch of wit that helps to keep your attention from cover to cover. Add to that the short size of the book at only a couple of hundred pages, and the vibrant but clear layout and you’ve got a book that’s in itself extremely usable and accessible.
When it comes to the content itself, it couldn’t be explained clearer. Steve’s chapters are logical and concise, you won’t find any waffle in here that doesn’t help to communicate the message of the chapter. He uses an adequate number of examples to illustrate his points, and even helps to demonstrate how various stakeholders in web projects can all contribute to the usability of a site or an app.
Alberto Savoia — The Right It
I’m not gonna lie, this book was a life-changer for me. Maybe due to its practice, maybe just the time was just right but Alberto’s words about finding the right solution first to a problem before investing a lot in nice designs and neat codebases completely re-shaped how I think about product design today. Similarly to Rob Fitpatrick’s book (which comes later on the list) opening the treasure chest about how to get market validation as fast as possible. I especially liked this one for the vast amount of possible tests (like the mechanical turk) to get your own data before relying on anyone else’s.
Jon Yablonski — Laws of UX
I love to learn from my UX designer colleagues with deep understanding of human psychology because I never really found the opportunity myself to study it well. Yablonski’s book is a great companion to my journey, as he is sharing some key principles from psychology to help design more intuitive, human-centered products and experiences. The individual examples are well structured and very knowledgeable by presenting some lesser known design “laws” too and not just stopping at Hick’s law & friends. If you’re interested in designing ethically humane digital products, then Jon’s other site Humane by Design is definitely for you as well!
David Airey — Work for Money, Design for Love
Do you have these questions in your mind: “How do I find new clients?”, “How much should I charge for my work?”. Well, this is a book written from the perspective of a one man design agency working with clients from all over the world in the field of graphic design. This is not a typical design business book, it’s unselfishly and generously sharing every single bit. It’s crazy to think about the amount of insights from the personal experience, not only of the author, but also of other creatives around the world. My favorite highlight was the last part where all those people were answering what is their motivation to design and work in a freelance/agency format.
Susan M. Weinschenk — 100 things every designer should know
about people
about people
You can tell that this book was created by a designer. It’s visually appealing: the content is broken into colored call-out boxes with headers, effectively breaking up the flow of the page enough to keep you engaged but not enough to distract you. The headers are also useful mindful because you can go back and look over them each day when you finish reading to help remember what you’ve read.
The book is conveniently divided into how people see, read, think, and what motivates people. Many things are common sense, but it is a great tool to remind oneself and backup UX/UI Design decisions. At the end of each of the 100 sections, there’s a box of takeaways, which gives practical advice on how the principles from the section can be applied to design.
Rob Fitzpatrick — The Mom Test
I’m not even asking if you’ve ever wondered after a product failure about reasons why it went wrong. I admit most of my products are a failure, but I often feel I’ve realized it too late and wasted so much resources for nothing. Often when I look back many of the mistakes happened due to lack of conversations with the right users. Rob’s short book and practical advises help you eliminate some early biases about your “baby”, so you can keep yourself grounded and humble.
I’ve especially liked how the book is “fixing” the typical research questions which might give you some false positive boost. Remember to don’t pitch, ask about their lives, their problems, their current solutions/workarounds but still nothing guaranteed. Keep going!
Thank you so much for reaching so far in this article! 👏 I hope you’ve found some titles you’ve never heard of before so you can kill time the next time you get bored during the winter. ❄️ Last but not least thanks for Christine Vallaure sharing her favorite books, which were a source of inspiration for this article!
Please don’t be hesitant to share your favorite books too in the comments below!
