10 Non-UX Books for Experience Designers
There’s more to designing experiences than experience design
With plenty of great lists of UX Books for UX Designers (here, here and here), I thought I’d instead make a short list of books from other disciplines which have been a big part of my design education.
1. Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
Alexander, also the author of A Pattern Language, wrote heady stuff about the way we design and find design solutions for architecture, city planning, tool making and more.
Notes on the Synthesis of Form is a truly geek-out-worthy exploration on the inner workings of the problem-solving and design process. Don’t expect a how-to.
2. How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand
The book, and the video series (in it’s entirety below), focus on the part of architecture that is rarely celebrated: how it is to live with it.
3. The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker
The subtle differences of thought (agency, impact, mode, dynamic, direction) are encoded in the words we choose, the words we use. Steven Pinker brings his lens to bear on the mind/language connection.
4. Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley
The creative process is a mysterious thing. We end up wearing lucky socks we refuse to wash, or touch the lock four times before opening. It’s hard to separate out the superstition from the stuff that really makes a difference. This focus on the creative process is meant to strip away all the myths and empower each of us to be more creative.
5. Design as Art by Bruno Munari
Insisting that even the most prosaic of design artifacts tap into the talismanic power of the visual for conjuring beauty, power and human connection, Munari is a giant in the realm of graphic design.
6. Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff
Metaphors are complex systems of understanding and explanation that rule so much of our communication and cognition. There is very little in our language that doesn’t leverage a metaphor (“leverage” for example). Drawing closer to the robust, complex and powerful machine that is the human mind is alway humbling and inspiring.
7. Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman
The underlying mechanisms and dynamics of meaning, art and craft receive a new bright light of attention from this titan of philosophy in a dizzying tour of the arts we are engage in and bolstered by.
8. Kant and the Platypus by Umberto Eco
Our words and heart and heads connect in ways that often get glossed over. The lauded novelist brings his wit, scholarship and craft to unpack the ways our minds bend to the words we use.
9. Embodied Image by Robert Harrist
A visual exploration of the intersection of literature, visual performance, and history as a writing system soars to artistic heights that transcend language, centuries, meaning and culture.
10. 20th Century Pleasures by Robert Hass
Before he was Poet Laureate, Robert Hass was known for his brisk and intelligent poetry full of pathos and intellectual honesty. Here is a collection of essays on some of the 20th Centuries poetic colossals: Robert Lowell, James Wright, Tomas Transtromer, Joseph Brodsky, Yvor Winters,Robert Creeley, James McMichael, Czeslaw Milosz, and others. He is interested in the movement, the music, the ideas and structures of these poets’ great works.
