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We asked some of our (and your!) favorite authors to share with us their
favorite 10 computer books from the past 10 years. Here's what we got back.
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Steve Krug is a highly respected usability consultant who has worked quietly for years for companies like Apple, Netscape, AOL, BarnesandNoble.com, Excite@Home, and Circle.com. Don't Make Me Think! is the product of more than ten years experience as a user advocate. After a decade writing computer manuals, in 1989 Steve Krug moved up the food chain to usability testing and interface design so he could fix the problems instead of explaining them.
Since then, he's evaluated and improved interfaces for a wide variety of clients, primarily in online services and the Web, including Apple, AOL, Netscape, the late, lamented Excite@Home, BarnesandNoble.com, Lexus.com, and Circle.com (originally Interactive Bureau).
His consulting firm, Advanced Common Sense ("just me and a few well-placed mirrors") is based in Chestnut Hill, MA. He currently spends most of his time reviewing existing sites and designs for new sites, conducting usability workshops, and helping clients resolve thorny interface problems.
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Steve's favorite books: |
 Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen --
The first comprehensive (yet highly accessible) book about usability and user centered design. Some of it may seem familiar, but that’s only because so many people have had spent the last ten years paraphrasing much of what first appeared there in 1993.
 Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites, 3rd Edition by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville --
Very few people manage to create an entire profession just by writing a book. Lou and Peter did it by shifting the focus away from designing the look of individual Web pages to organizing the information the whole site contains so people can find what they’re looking for.
(The author's original choice was an older edition that is now out of print. This link is to the current edition)
 The Mythical Man-Month: Anniversary Edition by Frederick Brooks --
This was a huge breath of fresh air when it first appeared in 1975: practical--and often counterintuitive--advice from the trenches about the realities of software development. And it was blissfully short and to the point, which is probably why it continues to sell well twenty years later.
 The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman --
All right, this one’s really sixteen years old, but it has a timeless quality to it. (And I reread it every five years anyway.) A wonderful introduction to the idea that usability is a crucial aspect of design, using examples that everyone can understand like door handles, faucets, and light switches.
 The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper --
Alan is one of those people I only agree with about half the time, but when he’s right, he’s right. In this case, he’s right about the value of creating user “personas” as a useful tool to keep the user in mind during the entire design process.
 A Practical Guide to Usability Testing by Joe Dumas and Janice Redish --
One of two great how-to books that explain how to improve your designs by watching people try to use what you build.
 Usability Testing and Research by Carol Barnum --
The other one. Since this one came later, it includes a lot more guidance about testing Web sites, and some terrific examples.
 Defensive Design for the Web by 37signals --
One of the best “best practices” books out there for people building Web sites.
 What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason by Hubert Dreyfus --
All right, I’ll admit it: I’m really at a Luddite at heart. Or at the very least, I think a lot of our hubris about technology solving our problems is often misplaced. Or maybe it’s just that I have a soft spot for books that are so good that they’re worth updating twenty years later.
Inner Navigation: Why we Get Lost in the World and How we Find Our Way by Erik Jonsson --
Not exactly a computer book. It’s really about all the wonderful unconscious processing/parsing we’re constantly doing as we make our way around in the physical world, and how we often manage to muddle through successfully even when our mental model of reality is all wrong. I love it because it describes exactly the same things that you see when you watch people try to navigate their way through a Web site.
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