(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best industrial & product design books

Designing Interfaces is great, and I find myself coming back to it when I'm stuck on something. I should note, however, that the examples focus primarily on desktop applications. It's not a stretch to apply most of the concepts to web apps, but some of the patterns aren't really applicable. However, I primarily do web work and I still think it's worth getting.

A classic Web usability book that's really easy to get through is Don't Make Me Think. Much of what makes for good web design is common sense, but it's nice to have it reinforced/verified.

If you're interested in site architecture (you should be) or some theory behind decisions behind visual design (particularly regarding heavy information), I'd also recommend The Information Design Workbook. Half of it is theory and the other half is examples and case studies. It also has some really nice guidelines for working with clients, such as "What is a design brief? Why do I need it? What should be included in it?"

Designing for Interaction is alright... The interviews in it are interesting, but the subject matter is pretty basic. That being said, it is a good primer. I'd definitely pick Designing Interfaces over this, though, if you're choosing between them.

I've heard good things about Designing Web Interfaces, but I haven't read it myself, so... I can't personally recommend it. (O'Reilly generally has pretty high standards, though, so it's probably a safe bet.)

I'd second useit.com and smashing, but sometimes, nothing beats books.

(If you're interested in getting more into the psychology of it, or are interested in a specific topic regarding UI/UX, let me know, as I have more recommendations... I just don't know what you're interested in.)

Don't feel downhearted, a year is long enough to get together a convincing junior portfolio if you're motivated.

• Stop discarding old work and start putting it in your portfolio.
  You will always look back at previous projects and see the things you're unhappy with, this never goes away. The person viewing your portfolio is looking at things with independent, fresh eyes. Even if they do see room for improvement, hopefully they will also see potential in the work. In an entry level position you're not expected to have everything perfect.
  
  
• Do some free/cheap projects with real clients.
  You almost certainly have someone you know who would like a logo/website/leaflet made. The real client part of it is key, as when you do get a job in the industry, you'll be working with clients and this is a whole world of pain if you're not prepared for it. Keeping a client happy, figuring out their needs, not taking things personally, but still doing good work is a skill, so demonstrating some experience of it matters.
  
  
• Get feedback on your work from people who's opinion you respect.
  Get feedback on an old project and improve it, don't get too attached to your first good idea. Ask your tutors to give you a harsh critique of your portfolio, don't defend your work even if it's uncomfortable, try to take it on the chin. Improve.
  
  
• Present your work in an interesting way.
  Show employers you mean business. I read this recently, it's really inspiring: http://www.underconsideration.com/flaunt/
  
  
• Read this
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Graphic-Designer-Without-Losing-Your/dp/1856694100
  
  
• The only thing Photoshop effect tutorials are good for is familiarising yourself with the program. They're pretty much 99% shit, don't get too caught up in what is currently trendy online.
  
  
• Read good blogs.
  Brand New and idsgn are a good start. If you find a logo, site, video, advertising campaign you like, try to find out who made it, have a look at their site. See their other work. Imitate aspects of the work you like.
  
  Hopefully something there will be useful to you

!!! It makes me happy to hear that people who do this stuff are interested.

I mostly deal with software so I don't have a ton of knowledge about hardware design in particular, but for more general design-related stuff, there are a few things that come to mind:

• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, who's independently a very big deal in interaction design (you may have seen him in a Vox video about how a lot of doors are designed terribly).
  
• Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling was pretty influential on me. This isn't immediately actionable stuff, but it's a great way of thinking about these things (edit: you can definitely find this online for free if you look around ahem)
  
  You also might find the GOMS model useful for thinking about design and thinking about how to evaluate designs, and "cognitive load". I've seen people use the NASA-TLX survey (Task Load Index, I think) to try to turn something amorphous like workload and effort and whatnot into something quantifiable. An important underlying point here is that sometimes fewer keystrokes, or faster processes, or whatever, are worse if they require more effort or cause more frustration.
  
  There are also some academic papers and concepts that might be useful:
  
  
• Parallel Prototyping Leads to Better Design Results, More Divergence, and Increased Self-Efficacy is a ~20 page paper that basically shows that making several designs in parallel and getting feedback on the different options actually measurably yields better final products. Showing someone one prototype to evaluate makes it difficult to think critically about. Anything is better than nothing, and they can't tell you the relative strengths or weaknesses of an idea if it's by itself. Another under-riding point here is to get feedback from other people not in the loop. Novices tend to think that they're capable of shifting their mindset and evaluating their own designs, but it's just not true. Lots of feedback is extremely important.
  
• I don't remember the name of the paper but there are the concepts of low/medium/high fidelity prototypes. The important thing to know is that if you give someone a high fidelity prototype they'll nitpick all the little details. The takeaway is that you'll get feedback about the concept if you can give people low fidelity prototypes and ask for feedback. This also allows you to iterate quickly and often. This is hugely applicable to hardware/physical design.
  
  I'll think if anything else comes to mind.

My advice is to follow 3 tracks.

• Build relationships. Find local meetings where people building products/companies or other designers go. Such as: 1 Million Cups, Open coffee club, Creative Mornings, CoFounders Lab, StartUp Grind, local UX meetups. Pick 1 weekly and go every week. Pick 1-2 others, go when you can. Talk to the people who run the group. See if they need any help checking people. Volunteer to do that. If you get to, be friendly and chat with people on the way in. This is your tribe. Don't feel like you don't belong b/c you are young or are checking them in (or whatever other excuse your mind might come up with). This is your opportunity to find out about what people are working on. Some people will be working on something that interests you, that you have the skills to help with (eventually if not now), and have a personality you could enjoy working with. Give 100% of these people your card. Tell them you do UI/UX on contract. Ask for their card. Talk to them more at the end of the meeting if you can. Not in a sales way. But in a get to know more about them way. Then follow up with an email shortly afterward, a few days to a week. And in 6 months again if you haven't connected since. Do this every week for 2-3 years and you will have your client base and reputation in town. If you need practice to feel confident doing the networking part, then practice. Your career counseling dept at college could probably help you practice. Friends can be good practice too. Comfort with networking is critical to running your own business. Your goal should be to eventually lead a recurring meeting.
  
  
• Build your skills. First college is great for learning some things. I believe it is terrible for learning UI/UX. Studying behavioral economics would probably be the most applicable, some psychology or data science as well. UI/UX moves too fast. But here are my recommendations for becoming good at UI/UX quickly:
  
  

1. Start using Sketch app by Bohemian coding. It is the current industry standard.
   
   
2. Sign up for Subform app wait list. It will probably be the next industry standard. But is not available yet.
   
   
3. Study design systems Practice using these elements to create screens. Download the Sketch file. Then grab the elements you need and create screens to build an app (preferably to solve a simple problem you care about). Start small. Practice designing quickly. Then go back and make details precise. Eventually you should be able to build your own design system like this.
   
   
4. Study material design and iOS design.
   
   
5. For inspiration in practice, look at examples on Dribbble, Behance, and at the apps you use everyday.
   
   
6. Get feedback from friends and family on the things you have designed.
   
   
7. Read books like Inspired, Seductive Interaction Design, Sprint, Product Leadership. There are many more.
   
   
8. Understand you need to know more than design to do contract work for small businesses. Your clients may often ask for one thing but really need something different. Study business in general. Read books and magazines about business models, industry shifts, etc. Good UX designers are always balancing user needs and business model needs. There is no formula for this. It takes practice. Lots of practice. Youth and inexperience here will be a challenge. Talk to as many people in their 30s/40+s about business lessons they have learned as you can. This knowledge will help your design.
   
   
9. Don't wait for the perfect idea to practice. Practice everyday.
   
   

• Build your savings. So you can go full-time at a co-working space. This is less direct advice. But you will need to have a few months of living expenses saved so one day you can dive in. A co-working space costs a few hundred per month but this is where your client base likely lives or goes to meetings occasionally. Being part of one shows you have a professional presence. And the serendipity at these places can be off the charts. And I highly recommend not working form home only for many reasons, sanity being an important one. Also, contract work can be feast or famine. I have had a handful of weeks in the past 4 years where I have needed to complete 60 billable hours work. This is more stressful than the weeks where I only have 20 billable hours b/c I save knowing work will be up and down.
  
  ----
  
  These are things that led me to where I am today. Others may have completely different or contradictory advice. But these are my go to methods. And most of my clients in the past 2 years have come to me. I didn't call them, or post an ad. Generally they found me through a recommendation from a friend, LinkedIn, Twitter, slack group, Dribbble, or at a meeting.

Scott Robertson's "How to draw" and "How to render" are pretty much the Gospel for automotive design students. He has a whole bunch of tutorials on youtube as well. As awesome as Sangwon Seok is, you really have to understand basics of automotive design like perspective and packaging before his stuff will start making sense.
Spencer Nugent the "sketch-a-day" guy is another person you can look up. He also dose a lot of product design, which is easier to understand and has the same principles as automotive design.
If you are super serious about pursuing automotive design, id also recommend investing in "H-point". That will help you figure out car packaging and the reasons why cars look the way they do.
And finally you can post you work on car design forums and get people to critique them for you, that is one of the best ways to learn! I'm sure you could even post things here and people (myself included) will be more than happy to give you pointers on how you are doing and what you could do to improve!

Scott Robertson

https://www.youtube.com/user/scottrobertsondesign

https://www.amazon.com/Scott-Robertson/e/B0034O5O32

Spencer Nugent

https://www.youtube.com/user/sketchadaydotcom

H-point

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1624650198/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=7CV8GTQBXFMMMTJWZNWE

Only 5~ months ago did I decide to get serious about improving my art in my free time. For most of my life I only doodled occasionally. So I thought I would describe my plan of action with books and resources that I will likely be using. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My process will be basics of construction-> perspective -> figure drawing -> digital art and rendering. Approximately 45% will be improving, 45% will be doing what I want for fun and 10% will be a daily sketch(this subreddit) that takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to complete. for fun I will be doing anything from digital to water color.

Construction and perspective: First I am starting my art journey by completing draw a box . Next I will go through Marshall Vandruff's Linear Perspective Videos and Perspective Made Easy simultaneously while referencing with how to draw by Scott Robertson. Briefly I will gloss at Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or keys to drawing pulling ideas of where I might find weakness.

Figure drawing: Once those are finished, I will begin my figure drawing phase. I will move onto free proko subsided with loomis books such as this, other photo references sites like http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en and Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. I will also reference Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist and maybe more depending on my budget.

digital art and rendering: For the final stage of my journey, I will venture into ctrlpaint. Simultaneously I will be reading How to Render, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

After that.... I don't know. We will see were I am in a year.

• Design Of Everyday Things - Donald Norman
  
• Emotional Design - Donald Norman
  
• Cradle to Cradle - McDonough & Braungart
  
  I also personally recommend The Industrial Design Reference & Specification Book which summarizes everything an aspiring/new designer should know. Great for reference, especially its anthropometrics section.
  
  If you have access to Rhino, I think its a good place to start. If you do a few searches on this sub, it's really split 50/50 on Rhino vs. SW. I think it depends mostly on where you want to end up. Either way, pick one or the other and you're good. You're already good since you're starting out early. I think generally though, most find it easier to learn SW after Rhino rather than the other way around.

A few things off the top of my head:

Creative Confidence By Tom and David Kelly (IDEO) - In fact, anything by these guys as IDEO are a great resource for design thinking.

Wacom Pen and Touch S Perfectly adequate starter tablet for sketching on a laptop.

Sketchbook Pro to go with it

Product Sketches - Great book with sketches of everyday things from Ideation to presentation quality.

Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design - Really good book covering the basics of industrial processes to manufacture objects.

Copic Multiliner set - maybe with some stationary. I fucking love stationary. Could combine this with a Moleskin or Field Notes notebook

Steal Like an Artist - cute, short book with a great message about how its not what you steal but how you steal it.

Kor 'Hydration Vessel' - I've had one for like 3 years.

Not exactly a coffee table book, but "How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer" by Adrian Newey is fantastic if he has an interest in cars.

Here's a little list of best-sellers on Amazon and a few from this thread:

• Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals
  
• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
  
• The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
  
• How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination
  
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
  
• The Non-Designer's Design Book (3rd Edition)
  
• Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design
  
• Envisioning Information
  
• Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition
  
• Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice
  
• Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills
  
• Design Basics (with CourseMate Printed Access Card)
  
• Graphic Design: The New Basics
  
• Style & Simplicity: An A to Z Guide to Living a More Beautiful Life
  
• The Color Scheme Bible: Inspirational Palettes for Designing Home Interiors
  
• The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
  
• Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming
  
• The Art of Looking Sideways
  

http://www.amazon.com/000-Package-Designs-mini-Comprehensive/dp/1592537057/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1ISPLWW7YFTD8&colid=2Y7Z548E3FK3D
1,000 Package Designs (mini): A Comprehensive Guide to Packing It In

great book!

Or 1,000 Bags, Tags, & Labels: Distinctive Designs for Every Industry


http://www.amazon.com/000-Bags-Tags-Labels-Distinctive/dp/1592531830/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323313469&sr=1-13

I have them both! Great books for inspiration.

There are a number of questions you need to ask yourself when building a physical product. Here a few to start with

1. What materials do you want it to be made out of? There is a difference between the cost of injection molding (plastic) and die casting (stainless steel).
   
   
2. Do you just want to build a frame around an OEM part or design it from the ground up? You can use sites like Alibaba to buy existing parts and build a frame around that. For example, you can use this (http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Quality-Stainless-Steel-Polished-Watch_60426012992.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.7fcp9a&s=p)
   
   
3. Can you afford it? Making the mold, manufacturing, regulations shipping, etc. Many people underestimate how much it will cost for manufacture. Making a plastic mold tool can run you $10,000 minimum and that is for a small part.
   
   
4. Do you want to outsource it? If it's made in China, you're most likely going to have to fly there and make sure the parts are made correctly. It will be cheaper though. If you want it to make in the United States, it's going cost you more.
   
   3D printing can be good to in making prototypes and validate if people it in the first place.
   
   Here are some good books basic books to learn about product design.
   
   
5. Manufacturing - https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Processes-Design-Professionals-Thompson/dp/0500513759/ref=sr_1_8/000-3022921-3912901?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468546649&sr=1-8
   
   
6. Prototyping - https://www.amazon.com/Prototyping-Modelmaking-Product-Design-Portfolio/dp/1856698769/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=41vzIIrA8mL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR124%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=836FPVZDP54MFYMRXGD6
   
   
7. Materials -https://www.amazon.com/Materials-Design-Chris-Lefteri/dp/1780673442/ref=zg_bs_3564966011_53
   
   An option is also to hire a design firm to help make the design possible for you to manufacture. However, you will still have to pay all the other costs.
   
   
   

The book I read it in was https://www.amazon.com/Product-Management-Practice-Real-World-Connective/dp/1491982276 and I'm 99% sure they go into more details in that book about specifically what they meant by it. (In general it's a pretty good book that I'd recommend)

​

For me it means things like:

• When a someone (usually for me a developer or a stakeholder) says something you don't understand, don't be afraid to admit you don't understand and to ask for more details.
  
• When you catch wind of something that conflicts with one of the assumptions you've made, don't just ignore it. Talk to whoever you need to talk to in order to get clarity as soon as you can, even though it would probably be mentally/emotionally easier to ignore it.
  
• When a senior/exec stakeholder insists they need a "thing" and you don't understand why, don't let their status at the company stop you from asking about why they want "thing"
  
  That sort of stuff.

Absolutely! Here's a short list of non-magic books that I commonly see recommended to magicians.

Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud

Purple Cow - Seth Godin

Delft Design Guide - multiple authors

An Acrobat of the Heart - Stephen Wangh (shouts out to u/mustardandpancakes for the recommendation)

In Pursuit of Elegance - Guy Kawasaki

The Backstage Handbook - Paul Carter, illustrated by George Chiang

Verbal Judo - George Thompson and Jerry Jenkins

Be Our Guest - Ted Kinni and The Disney Institute

Start With Why - Simon Sinek

Lots of common themes even on such a short list. What would you add to the list? What would you take away?

The Measure of Man and Women is a very good reference, though the data may be outdated now. Link

H-Point is very good as well, although it focuses on cars and transportation Link

I'd recommend Donald Normans "The Design of Everyday Things" too, as it goes into the psychology of products and how we use them. Not ergonomics specifically, but very useful to learn about. Link

This book is good. It gets quite repetitive, but it is exciting and it certainly makes me want to work for Ideo.

If you like the course, maybe the Delft design guide is for you! Definitely recommend it myself.

Thanks man! Will check it out. I am an avid fan of DPPL btw...

I actually bought the ICONIC book bu Jonathan Zufi, it contains great pictures of the design as well some interiors electronics for a lot less money than apple is asking for.

Usability is within UX. Everything that is usability is also ux. Just like everything that is dermatology is also health. Do you want me to draw you a venn diagram?

I appreciate that it is more specific and helpful to refer to the button issue as a usability failure. But you cannot tell someone they are straight up wrong for calling it UX. It. is. UX.

edit: Also Steve Krug talks about UX all the time:
https://twitter.com/skrug
"I'm dying to hear what @jjg and 5 others (including me) have to say about the future of UX."
"Wow. @staples has gotten so NOT easy for me that I'm taking my business elsewhere. Sad. #ux #fail"
"Shoot myself in the foot department: Laura Klein's UX for Lean Startups is a really good book. http://amzn.com/1449334911 #UX #usability"
"Great summary of my UX future talk yesterday in @karenbachmann's tweets. Retweets follow."

Buy Iconic instead, 4 years old but it has very good pictures. It has 650 pictures.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/098858171X/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

> Do you know where I can go for an IDEO

IDEO is a company:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEO
  
• https://www.ideo.com/about
  
  Follow them on FB to get announcements on their programs:
  
  
• https://www.facebook.com/IDEOprofile/
  
• https://www.facebook.com/IDEO.org
  
• https://www.facebook.com/IDEOresearch
  
  Their most famous book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385499841/
  
  Their methodology: https://www.ideo.com/post/method-cards
  
  P.S.: you could also hire them, they are very expensive because... they are the best in the world.

IMO by far the best book which summarises automotive design from an objective perspective is H point, it's given to car design students for a reason.

Great idea. Sometimes goes by the moniker "Lean UX" as in http://www.amazon.com/Lean-UX-Applying-Principles-Experience/dp/1449311652 and http://www.amazon.com/UX-Lean-Startups-Experience-Research/dp/1449334911/ref=pd_sim_b_9?ie=UTF8&refRID=0ZY6P3SYWTKC77QXRKS6

Dan Saffer has some good ideas on Human Factors and Usability as well.

Product Management in Practice... Have recommended this to a few people who are early on in their PM career (was helpful to me as well!)

A former manager I really respect swears by "Product Leadership" https://www.amazon.com/Product-Leadership-Managers-Products-Successful/dp/1491960604

Absolutely. Casa's multisig wallet has a stunning UI. Their designer Scott Hurff wrote a book on design called Designing Products People Love. You can read a very interesting excerpt from his book here.

H-Point 2nd Edition: The Fundamentals of Car Design & Packaging

This is a good one for proportions and how to draw a car in some basic views.

I would recommend trying to get this book as a starting point on how to prototype ideas https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prototyping-Modelmaking-Product-Design-Portfolio/dp/1856698769/

How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul is as close as you will get to a career manual for designers (freelance/in-house or who own their own studio)

Ride height is not the only thing which determines what segment a car is. If it was then using your logic all cars with a similar ride height would be the same segment.

If you can't see why the CHR is a crossover and the Avant is a wagon, buy a copy of H Point and read it, I don't know what to say.

I think Scott Robertson book, How to render, goes into detail on this. I have not read it though...

>https://www.amazon.com/Product-Leadership-Managers-Products-Successful/dp/1491960604

The reviews are very mixed on this book. Why all the hype?