Designing Interactions

What Hacker News says

1. krickelkrackelFeb 2026
   I'd want to add "Designing Interactions" by Bill Moggridge (IDEO, designer of the first 'laptop' computer):

   https://www.amazon.com/-/en/Designing-Interactions-Press-Bil...

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2. dmazinFeb 2020
   He gave us so much more than cut, copy, paste. It's clear from all the design history books that I've read that he's a legend.[1]

   NO MODES!

   https://itsthedatastupid.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/nomodes...

   [1] One of the more rare sources for Larry Tesler's contributions is his interview for Bill Moggridge's Designing Interactions (http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler)

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3. kthejoker2Aug 2019
   My own humble suggestions - although the books are hardly forgotten. But I think people focus a lot on technical / engineering books, and very little on design / user experience / human behavior, which arguably contribute much more to the overall impressions end users have of programmers' work.

   First, the greatest book of all time, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - an amazingly introspective and insightful look into how to live an examined life and improve oneself.

   And then if you want to learn lower-case "design thinking", my top 10 books

   * Design for Everyday Things - duh. I re-read chunks of it all the time.

   * Tufte - hard to pick one, I might actually be iconoclastic and go with Visual Explanations which I think has more to offer programmers over pure data visualization. Again, just grab one every day, flip through 3-4 pages, rinse, repeat.

   * User Story Mapping - Extremely memorable book - it gives you a pretty clear field guide on prioritization, empathy, communication ... just a great book.

   * Badass by Kathy Sierra - I flip through this book again and again. It is gospel truth about what motivates humans.

   * The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design - IDEO's most practical book. (Close second: Designing Interactions.)

   * Universal Methods of Design - another deeply practical book, lots of good tips and examples.

   * Universal Principles of Design - Sister book to the Universal Methods. Again, straightforward, flip to any page and get an idea when you're brainstorming.

   * Thinking in Systems - I recommend you skim this book through, but come back to it a lot, it grows with you.

   * Inspired by Marty Cagan - again, love nuts and bolts process books.

   * Don't Make Me Think! - still a classic, still see these mistakes being made all the time in modern app dev.

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4. RNeffJun 2019
   Start with the book: Designing Interactions, compiled and edited by Bill Moggridge, 2007. ACM has a special interest group, SIGCHI, on Computer Human Interaction. They have online resources, local chapters, an annual conference https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/sigs/sigchi Also an annual conference: https://sigchi.org/conferences/upcoming-conferences/ If you have access to ACM's Digital Library, all of the Proceedings are there.

   Do searches for documentation for different systems. There is a NextStep manual on Archive.org, for example. There are Xerox PARC Altos manuals at bitsavers.org. There are X Windows docs at X.org.

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5. DowwieSep 2017
   "Designing Interactions" by Bill Moggridge https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interactions-Press-Bill-Mog...

   He passed away in 2012. I wish someone wrote a worth revised edition.

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6. gvajraveluAug 2017
   The two resources I recommend are The Designer of Everyday Things (https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/...) and Designing Interactions (https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interactions-Press-Bill-Mog...)

   Both focus on more than website design, but they helped me understand how users interact with my user interfaces. I'm sure there are also a ton of great blog posts out there too, but I found these books the most helpful.

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