My Favorite UX Books + Why (2025 Edition)
Nearly seven years ago, I published a blog post about my favorite user experience (UX) books. I figured it was time to revisit my list and share why these are my current favorites.
Living with Complexity – Don Norman (2016), 308 pages
Don Norman continues to be a thought provoking and grounding resource for me. Although this book is not new, I re-read it a few months back and it’s as compelling now as it was when I first read it. In his typical way, he tackles the fundamental and often frustrating aspects of modern life: the complexity that comes with technology, systems, and design, and how we can better manage and embrace it.
While Living with Complexity is aimed at designers, it’s also highly readable for anyone interested in how modern systems work. Whether you’re a business leader, a technologist, or simply a consumer, the book provides valuable insights that can help you better navigate complex systems, advocate for better design, or understand the challenges that products or services face in today’s world.
Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services, Second Edition – Jon Yablonski (2024), 183 pages
Shout out to Tim Frisch for recommending this one to me. If you’re a UX geek like Tim and me, then “Laws of UX” is for you. It is a concise and insightful guide that applies psychology principles to the field of user experience (UX) design. The second edition of the book builds on the first edition, providing updated insights and a more comprehensive exploration of key psychological principles that can be used to design better, more user-friendly products and services.
The book is structured around a set of foundational “laws” that explain how human cognition, perception, and behavior influence the way users interact with digital products. Each “law” is grounded in psychological research and offers practical guidance for designers to create intuitive, effective, and engaging user experiences.
Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research – Tomer Sharon (2016), 320 pages
This book is one of several outstanding books published by Rosenfeld media. I have come to regard them as outstanding resources for how we work here at Don’t Panic Labs. As far as user research goes, this has become my new go-to reference as far as what to do when and why. I simply can’t say enough good things about it. If you are a UX team of one or, as we are, part of a very lean group of developers, you’ll find the methods in this book to be a good fit. The book takes a very direct and easy to apply approach to how it is organized. Each chapter is designed to walk the reader through how to solve (or answer) a specific question. When I first stumbled across this book, I was in the middle of formulating a research plan. This book enabled me to jump to the appropriate chapter, read it and apply some pretty amazing and proven methods to my project. Days later my team was calling me a rock star. We learned more than we ever had in previous research engagements and it had taken half the time. The real credit goes to Tomar Sharon and his book.
Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights – Steve Portigal (2013), 158 pages
This is another book from Rosenfeld media and one that is a great companion book to Sharon’s Validating Product Ideas. I have been interviewing users since the late 90s and I still feel that I have a lot to learn. There are a lot of soft skills that can only be learned from doing and performing honest team retrospectives. But this book will definitely provide a jump-start if you’re new to conducting interviews; excellent reference and guidance if you’re looking to hone your skills or great affirmation if you’re a seasoned pro.
The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide – Leay Buley (2013, revised 2024), 246 pages
This is another book from Rosenfeld media and I have to say for people just entering the workforce as a UX designer or for people who truly are a UX team of one. If you are a seasoned UX person who is successful working on your own, you may not get a lot out of this book.
A revised version of this book was released last year, so I haven’t read this new version.
Designing for the Digital Age – Kim Goodwin (2009), 708 pages
I first met Kim Goodwin at a conference in New Orleans in 2000 and have been a convert and fan ever since. From a lean and Agile perspective, you might look at this book and think that it has no bearing on how we work. You might even argue that the methods employed are heavy and don’t apply to start-ups. We don’t follow the UX practices exactly as Kim has laid them out, but at a high-level our process looks a lot like Kim’s.
I have been designing software successfully for over 20 years and I have to give Kim Goodwin and Alan Cooper shout outs for their processes and methods. I still go back to her book as reference from time to time and continue to give copies away to people looking for deep insight and understanding into UX as a formal practice.
