10 books every product designer should read in 2016

Product Design Reading List in 2016

There seem to be tons of books out there for a product manager and designer to read — good or bad. We've unearthed and complied a list with themes covering on product design, user experience, product management, statistics, workflow, content design and leadership. If you want to move into a role in Product Management as a beginner or have any aspiration to be a great product manager or product designer, you should take a peek on these books.

The Design of Everyday Things By Don Norman

As one of the classic and must-read books for product designers, this is easy-to-read even for people without having an academic background in design. It will open a door for you. You'll learn to realize the world and observe objects around you from a designer perspective. Everything is a designing objects, either good or bad.
 
A book published over 20 years ago, its core point still apply today. It's a book that has stood the test of time. And without doubt, it's worth reading and re-reading. 
 

Quote from the book:

Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible.

 Don’t Make Me Think By Steve Krug

There are plenty of great books on usability, and Don’t Make Me Think is the best one of them. It's overriding theme to this book is「don't make me think」as a book name. In a concise, breezy but professional writing style, Steve Krug helps us understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. It's almost an enjoyable reading experience. 
 

Quote from the book:

Designers love subtle cues, because subtlety is one of the traits of sophisticated design. But Web users are generally in such a hurry that they routinely miss subtle cues.

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation By Tim Brown

In this book, Tim Brown's Change by Design introduces design thinking, which is not only about aesthetics, it's a practical philosophy, a kind of collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. Following human-centered approach, design thinking turns needs into demand. 
 
Design thinking can be learned and developed intentional. A potential design thinker needs to possess such characteristics as below: empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism and collaboration.
 

Quote from the book:

At IDEO we have dedicated rooms for our brainstorming sessions, and the rules are literally written on the walls: Defer judgment. Encourage wild ideas. Stay focused on the topic. The most important of them, I would argue, is "Build on the ideas of others.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products By Nir Eyal
 

A must read book for every product designer who is serious about his or her product. He boils down to four actionable steps ——trigger, action, variable rewards and Investment, forming a Hook Model. If you ever want to know what keeps people coming back to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the answer is contained in this book. And if you're working on a consumer product, be sure to read it.
 

Quote from the book:

Users who continually find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about it.

 

Naked Statistics By Charles Wheelan

In the era of information explosion, a product designer needs to deal with messy data and information in chaos. Filtering effective information and from huge amounts of data, make analysis in in an understandable manner for further product strategy.

Don't expect it to be another boring, hard to digest book on Statistics. Unlike a traditional statistics book , Charles Wheelan’s Naked Statistics explains the statistical ideas in a more interesting way. Packed with lots of real-world examples, it makes an easy-to-understandable book.
 

Quote from the book:

It’s easy to lie with statistics, but it’s hard to tell the truth without them.

 
 Letting go of the words: writing web content that works By Janice (Ginny) Redish

There's plenty of books about web content. But this one stands out from other ones that it is much beyond web content.

It illustrates one point: you should design your content for your visitors. Always keep users' needs in your mind. For example, write to your users with one-personal viewpoint by using 'We','I' and 'You' .This way will connect your content to your users better.It's not only for product manager, but suitable for UI/UX designers, content strategists, front-end developers, copywriters, anyone who wants to produce good content.

Quote from the book:

What I am advocating: For every topic on your site, think about what people come wanting to know about that topic. And then think about how to give them that information as clearly and concisely as possible.

 

Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology By Gayle Laakmann McDowell / Jackie Bavaro

 

Is a product manager required to have a technical background? What exactly is the role and responsibility of a product manager? How to land a product manager offer? What should a good PM resume look like? What makes a great PM cover letter ? You can find the answers to all these questions in Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology. This book is co-authored by Gayle McDowell and Jackie Bavaro. Gayle McDowell, previously working for Google, Microsoft and Apple, had interviewed more than 150 candidates and had reviewed more than 1,000 resumes at Google. Jackie Bavaro, another author, previous Google PM, has gained 8 years of experience on product management.
 

Quote from the book:

A resume isn’t read; it’s skimmed. A resume screener will glance at your resume for about 15 seconds (or maybe less) to make a decision about whether or not to interview you. This forms the guiding principle of resumes. A resume should be optimized for that 15-second skim.

Yes to the Mess：Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz By Frank Barrett

A product manager needs to take care of lots of things at the same time and most of them are uncertain situations. This is big challenge somehow. Coincidentally, complexity along with constant change, this is what a jazz artist usually experienced. But they never treat it as a hassle but as a breaking point to 'reach beyond their comfort zones'. They invent response, take turns in soloing and collaborate with each other, and this is what we call 'the art of improvising'. And this is actually how a great jazz work come to life. Barrett, a professor of management, is also a jazz pianist who presents in juxtaposed examples both in jazz improvising and business world how the jazz mindset and the skills that go along with it can be applied to product management. 
 

Quote from the book:

The best jazz is made up of “orderless order, where players are in constant dialogue, while doing their own thing, and relating their creations to what other band members are doing.

 

 The Mythical Man-Month By Frederick P. Brooks Jr

 
A classic book on software development process, published over 40 years ago, but it's still relevant today. Frederick P. Brooks Jr, the author of the book, demolishes the belief that putting more people on a project will make a progress. He points out a simple statement: A project that requires five team members to work for five months cannot be completed by a twenty-five person team in one month. If you're undertaking a software development and want to make a progress in an effective way, you should get hold of a copy of Brooks without delay. 
 

 Quotes from the book:

• Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you.
• Adding manpower to a late software project, makes it later.
  
  

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days By Jake Knapp

In this book, Jake Knapp, working for Google venture, designs a way in which how a team member should work together.

That is to say, he invents a design framework, a working process to create products and test ideas in just five working days instead of a year long cycle.That method was the one that proved effective for product design since there are lots of successful examples such as Google Hangouts, Gmail, Google X, Slack, Nest, Blue Bottle Coffee, and 23andMe. It worth giving a design sprint a try as a  product manager, designer or entrepreneur you can use to fail fast, rapidly iterate and grow quickly.
 

Quote from the book:

We’ve found that magic happens when we use big whiteboards to solve problems. As humans, our short-term memory is not all that good, but our spatial memory is awesome. A sprint room, plastered with notes, diagrams, printouts, and more, takes advantage of that spatial memory. The room itself becomes a sort of shared brain for the team.