This 2025 UX reading list is your comprehensive professional library, distilling 35 essential reads that span from foundational usability to the frontiers of AI and service design. It’s more than a list; it’s a strategic curriculum for your growth, based on a survey of 150+ design professionals and emerging industry demands.

Key Takeaways: Your TL;DR

• Master the Foundations: Begin with the timeless principles of usability and human-centered design from Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think and Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things.
• Become a Research Powerhouse: Learn how to ask the right questions with The Mom Test and build a system for continuous learning with Continuous Discovery Habits.
• Adopt Modern Processes: Integrate your work with agile and business goals using Lean UX and create clarity with User Story Mapping.
• Think Like a Strategist: Connect your design work to business impact with Escaping the Build Trap and UX Strategy.
• Understand User Psychology: Build products people love by understanding behavior with Hooked and Thinking, Fast and Slow.
• Design for the Future: Get ahead of the curve by designing for holistic services (This is Service Design Doing) and trustworthy AI (UX For AI).

Foundations Principles

These are the non-negotiable classics. Master these to build your entire career on a solid foundation.

Don’t Make Me Think

(New Riders, 2014, 3rd Edition)

This book’s core lesson is simple but powerful: design should be self-evident. It provides foundational rules for interfaces that respect user time and cognitive energy.

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug introduces Krug’s First Law of Usability: digital products must be obvious to reduce user cognitive load. Essential for Beginner UX/UI Designers, it offers actionable techniques for usability testing and writing scannable web copy.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Run your first guerrilla usability test this week. Grab five colleagues, give them a simple task on your product, and watch them work without saying a word.

The Design of Everyday Things

(Basic Books, 2013, Revised Edition)

This book gives you the “x-ray vision” to see the hidden design principles—or flaws—in every object around you.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman establishes the theoretical framework for human-centered design. It introduces universal design principles like signifiers, affordances, mappings, and feedback. A mandatory read for designers at all levels.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Pick one frustrating product you use daily. Sketch it out and label its affordances, signifiers, and feedback loops. Identify where it fails and propose a fix.

About Face

(Wiley, 2014, 4th Edition)

This is the definitive manual for designing complex software with discipline and empathy, teaching you to build detailed user archetypes and design workflows that help them achieve their goals.

About Face by Alan Cooper, et al., is the definitive text on interaction design. It introduces the Goal-Directed Design methodology, which uses robust personas to design complex software based on user goals. Essential for Intermediate and Advanced Interaction Designers.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Create a “proto-persona” for one of your key user segments based on assumptions. Then, conduct five short interviews with real users and update the persona with real data.

The Lean Startup

(Crown Business, 2011)

This book launched a movement. It’s the foundational text for modern, capital-efficient product development, teaching you to validate ideas before you build them.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries provides the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop, a core concept for modern product teams. It’s essential for designers to understand this framework to align their work with the agile, iterative, and validation-focused world of tech.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Identify the riskiest assumption in your current project and design a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) experiment to test it. The MVP could be as simple as a landing page or a manual prototype.

Inspired

(Wiley, 2018, 2nd Edition)

This is the bible for how modern product organizations build successful products. It defines what a strong product organization looks like and how to truly discover what customers want.

Inspired by Marty Cagan provides a comprehensive overview of how leading technology companies develop successful products. It emphasizes the importance of strong product management, empowered teams, and continuous discovery.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Reflect on your current team’s “discovery” process. How frequently do you talk to real users? Are engineers involved in discovery? Identify one small change you can advocate for to make discovery more continuous.

Transformed

(Wiley, 2021)

While Inspired focused on product teams, Transformed zooms out to the entire organization, showing how to create a culture where empowered product teams can truly thrive.

Transformed by Marty Cagan delves into how large organizations can transform into successful product-led companies. It addresses common organizational dysfunctions and provides guidance on creating an environment where modern product practices can flourish.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Think about a common point of friction in your organization (e.g., handoffs between teams, conflicting priorities). How might transforming the organizational structure or reporting lines, as discussed in this book, alleviate that friction?

Good to Great

(HarperBusiness, 2001)

This book dives deep into what makes companies truly excel over the long term, moving beyond just “good” performance. It’s about enduring success through disciplined people, thought, and action.

Good to Great by Jim Collins investigates how companies make the leap from good results to sustained great performance. It identifies key characteristics of “level 5 leaders,” disciplined cultures, and how to confront brutal facts. While not UX-specific, its insights into organizational excellence are vital for designers seeking to lead and build impactful products within thriving companies.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Identify one “brutal fact” about your product or team that needs to be addressed. Brainstorm how you can bring this fact to light and initiate a constructive discussion around it.

User Research & Discovery

Great design starts with deep user understanding. These books give you the tools and frameworks to uncover what people truly need.

The Mom Test

(Paperback, 2013)

This book teaches you how to stop people from lying to you about their problems and purchase intent. It’s the single most important book on customer discovery.

The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick is a short, powerful guide to customer conversations. It teaches you to avoid bad data by asking questions about your users’ lives instead of your idea. A must-read for everyone who talks to customers.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: In your next user interview, ban yourself from mentioning your product idea for the first 15 minutes. Focus solely on the user’s past behavior related to the problem you’re trying to solve.

Continuous Discovery Habits

(Product Talk LLC, 2021)

This is the operating system for modern, empowered product teams. It provides a structured, repeatable way to engage with customers every week.

Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres offers a sustainable framework for weekly customer touchpoints. It introduces the Opportunity Solution Tree, a visual model for connecting user needs to business outcomes. Critical for Product Trios (PM, Designer, Engineer).

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: This week, schedule two 15-minute interviews with customers alongside your PM and tech lead. The goal isn’t to validate a specific solution, but to uncover opportunities and pain points.

Just Enough Research

(A Book Apart, 2019, 2nd Edition)

This book destroys the excuse “we don’t have time for research.” It’s a pragmatic guide to getting good-enough insights, right now.

Just Enough Research by Erika Hall delivers a pragmatic toolkit for conducting effective user research under tight deadlines. This guide is indispensable for UX Designers and Product Managers who need to make data-informed decisions quickly.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Identify your project’s single biggest uncertainty. Formulate it as a question and spend just one day researching it through competitor analysis or three quick user interviews.

Interviewing Users

(Rosenfeld Media, 2013)

This is the masterclass on user interviewing. It teaches you how to build rapport, listen actively, and uncover the stories behind the data.

Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal is a deep dive into the craft of user interviews. It’s for designers who want to move from basic questioning to becoming masterful ethnographers, providing techniques for handling awkward situations and analyzing findings.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Record (with permission!) your next user interview. Listen back and identify one moment where you could have asked a better follow-up question instead of moving on to the next item on your script.

Competing Against Luck

(Harper Business, 2016)

This book fundamentally reframes how you think about innovation. People don’t buy products; they hire them to make progress in their lives.

Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen, et al., is the definitive text on Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) theory. It teaches you to focus on the user’s underlying motivation and the context of their struggle, which is the true driver of purchase and adoption.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Pick a product you use. Ask yourself: “What ‘job’ did I hire this for?” Then, identify the “Four Forces” at play: the push of the situation, the pull of the new solution, the anxiety of the new, and the habit of the old.

The Theory of Jobs to Be Done

(JTBD Press, 2020)

This guide translates the high-level theory from Competing Against Luck into a step-by-step process you can use in your research interviews.

The Theory of Jobs to Be Done by Bob Moesta and Greg Engle provides the practical tools for conducting JTBD interviews. It focuses on uncovering the “timeline” of a customer’s first purchase to understand the causal forces that led to their decision.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: In your next discovery interview, instead of asking about features, ask the user to tell you the story of when they first started looking for a solution like yours.

Think Like a UX Researcher

(CRC Press, 2019)

This book is less about how to conduct research and more about how to make research influential by managing stakeholders and communicating strategically.

Think Like a UX Researcher by David Travis and Philip Hodgson teaches the strategic mindset required to lead impactful research initiatives. A critical resource for UX Researchers and Designers seeking to advance into leadership roles.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Before your next research project, write the one-sentence headline you hope the final report will have. This focuses your plan on the most impactful potential outcome.

The Right It

(Wiley, 2019)

This book provides a structured, scientific approach to de-risking new product ideas before you invest heavily in development.

The Right It by Alberto Savoia introduces the concept of “pretotyping”—testing the appeal of an idea with the smallest possible investment. It’s about gathering your own data on market demand, not just relying on opinions.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: For your next big feature idea, create a “pretotype” to test demand. This could be a “Fake Door” (a button for the feature that leads to a “coming soon” page) or a “Mechanical Turk” (manually delivering the service behind the scenes).

Validating Product Ideas

(Leanpub, 2014)

This practical handbook gives you a step-by-step guide to testing your product ideas before you build them, saving you time and resources.

Validating Product Ideas by Tomer Sharon provides a pragmatic approach to user research, focusing on quick, actionable methods for validating product ideas with real users. It’s filled with practical tips for conducting effective experiments and extracting meaningful insights.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Design a small “smoke test” for a new feature idea. This could involve advertising the feature and seeing how many people click, even if the feature isn’t built yet.

Small Data

(St. Martin’s Press, 2016)

While “big data” tells you what is happening, “small data” tells you why. This book teaches you how to uncover deep human desires by looking for clues in people’s homes and lives.

Small Data by Martin Lindstrom advocates for focusing on qualitative “small data” observations to uncover deep human needs and desires that big data might miss. It provides a unique ethnographic approach to understanding consumer behavior.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Observe a user in their natural environment (e.g., how they organize their desk, what apps they use most frequently). Look for “desire gaps”—unarticulated needs that could be solved by your product.

Process, Execution & Methodology

Great ideas are not enough. These books provide the frameworks and processes to execute effectively within a team.

Lean UX

(O’Reilly Media, 2021, 3rd Edition)

This book offers a way out of the “waterfall” mindset by embedding design directly into the agile process, making you a true collaborator.

Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden provides a framework for integrating user experience design with agile development. Its central methodology, the “Think, Make, Check” loop, prioritizes validated learning. Essential for Intermediate to Advanced UX Designers and Product Managers.
(Consider including a simple diagram of the Think-Make-Check loop here, with alt text: “Diagram illustrating the Lean UX Think-Make-Check loop.”)

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: This week, identify one key assumption your team holds about users and design a small, low-cost experiment to test it.

User Story Mapping

(O’Reilly Media, 2014)

This book shows you how to turn a flat backlog of features into a rich, two-dimensional map that tells a story and builds shared understanding across the entire team.

User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton is a powerful technique for visualizing the user journey and prioritizing work. It helps teams stay user-focused, see the big picture, and plan releases that deliver value incrementally.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: For your next feature, lead a story mapping session. Start with the user’s high-level goals (the “backbone”) and then break down the specific steps and details underneath.

Sprint

(Simon & Schuster, 2016)

This book is a recipe for a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, and design thinking, packaged into a single, high-impact week.

Sprint by Jake Knapp, et al., details the Design Sprint process developed at Google Ventures. It’s a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: You don’t need a full week. Run a “mini-sprint” on a smaller problem. Dedicate one day to mapping and sketching, and another to prototyping and testing with just three users.

The Lean Product Playbook

(Wiley, 2016)

This book provides a practical, step-by-step methodology for applying lean principles to product development. It’s the field guide to The Lean Startup‘s theory.

The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen introduces the Lean Product Process. It features the Product-Market Fit Pyramid, a model that helps you articulate and test your hypotheses across five layers: target customer, underserved needs, value proposition, feature set, and UX.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Use the Product-Market Fit Pyramid to diagnose your current product. Are all five layers clearly defined and validated? Where are the gaps in your strategy?

Scrum

(Crown, 2014)

This book explains the “why” behind the agile ceremonies. It’s about building teams that can inspect, adapt, and deliver value faster and more effectively.

Scrum by Jeff Sutherland, one of the co-creators of the framework, details the principles and practices of Scrum. For UX designers, understanding this is crucial for effective collaboration with development teams.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: If your team uses Scrum, volunteer to facilitate the next sprint retrospective. Use the “Sailboat” or “Start, Stop, Continue” formats to generate actionable insights for improving the team’s process.

Designing Products People Love

(Wiley, 2015)

This is a practical, step-by-step guide to building products that resonate with users. It focuses on the importance of understanding customer needs deeply and iterating quickly.

Designing Products People Love by Scott Hurff offers a comprehensive guide to the product design process, from identifying problems to launching and iterating. It emphasizes user research, prototyping, and metrics for success.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Pick one part of your product where you suspect user love is low. Conduct a quick “love/hate” survey with 5-10 users to pinpoint specific frustrations.

The Design Thinking Playbook

(Wiley, 2018)

This book explains the overall process and mindset of design thinking, from understanding users to ideating and testing solutions.

The Design Thinking Playbook by Michael Lewrick, et al., explains the overall process of design thinking, helping teams to frame problems, generate ideas, and prototype solutions. It’s a conceptual guide to the methodology.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Read the first few chapters and then outline how you would apply the initial stages (Empathize, Define) to a non-work problem in your daily life.

The Design Thinking Toolbox

(Wiley, 2020)

This book is the practical companion to The Design Thinking Playbook, providing over 50 hands-on methods for workshop facilitation and collaborative problem-solving.

The Design Thinking Toolbox by Michael Lewrick, et al., provides a practical collection of tools and methods for each stage of the design thinking process. It’s an invaluable resource for facilitators and teams looking to run effective workshops.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Pick one method from The Toolbox (like “empathy mapping” or “how might we” questions) and use it to structure the first 30 minutes of your next team meeting.

Introduction to Design Thinking for UX Beginners

(Various Publishers)

This is your starting point for understanding the five-stage model that powers innovation at companies like Apple and Google. It provides the “what” before other books give you the “how.”

Introduction to Design Thinking for UX Beginners is a resource offering a concise overview of the five-stage design thinking framework: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. It is an ideal starting point for Beginners new to UX or design thinking.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Apply the five stages to a simple problem, like “improving the morning coffee routine.” Empathize with the sleepy user, define the core problem, ideate solutions, and prototype one with a quick sketch.

Working Backwards

(Currency, 2020)

This book reveals the unique product development process at Amazon, where every new idea starts with a press release and FAQ written before any code is written.

Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr outlines Amazon’s distinctive approach to innovation, particularly the “Working Backwards” process. This methodology forces teams to define the customer experience and measurable outcomes from the very beginning.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: For your next significant project, try writing a “Press Release” for its launch and a “Customer FAQ” as if it already exists. This will force you to articulate the customer benefits and anticipate questions.

The Mythical Man-Month

(Addison-Wesley Professional, 1995, 20th Anniversary Edition)

This book is a timeless classic on software project management, famously explaining why “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” It’s about the realities of building complex systems.

The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks Jr., while focused on software engineering, offers profound insights into project management, team dynamics, and the challenges of complex system development. Its lessons on communication, planning, and the inherent difficulties of “scaling” teams are highly relevant for UX leaders.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Consider the “No Silver Bullet” essay within the book. Identify a common “silver bullet” solution your team relies on (e.g., a new tool, a new process) and critically evaluate its actual impact.

Reset

(Wiley, 2020)

This book provides a practical guide for fixing common organizational and product development dysfunctions, helping teams “reset” and get back on track.

Reset by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones addresses common pitfalls in product development and offers actionable strategies for correcting course. It’s about identifying and overcoming the systemic issues that hinder product success.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Think about a recent project that struggled. Using concepts from Reset, identify one “anti-pattern” (e.g., feature-driven roadmap, lack of clear ownership) that contributed to the struggle.

Strategy & Business Acumen

To have a real impact, designers must speak the language of business. These books connect design to strategy, value, and ROI.

UX Strategy

(O’Reilly Media, 2021, 2nd Edition)

This book provides a blueprint for making sure your design work isn’t just a cost center, but a strategic driver of value.

UX Strategy by Jaime Levy provides a repeatable framework that aligns business strategy with validated user research. Its methodology is built on four tenets: Business Strategy, Value Innovation, Validated User Research, and Killer UX Design.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Use the “four tenets” to vet your next project idea. Can you clearly articulate the business strategy, the unique value proposition, the user validation, and the vision for the design?

Everyday Information Architecture

(A Book Apart, 2022)

This book makes the often-intimidating field of Information Architecture (IA) feel practical and achievable. It’s about bringing clarity and structure to chaos.

Everyday Information Architecture by Lisa Maria Marquis is a modern, accessible guide to organizing digital content. Essential for UX Designers and Content Strategists, effective IA is the invisible backbone of any usable large-scale application.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Conduct a simple “card sort” for your website’s main navigation. Write each page title on a sticky note and ask a few users to group them in a way that makes sense to them.

Escaping the Build Trap

(Sense & Respond Press, 2019)

This is the essential guide for any product person who feels stuck in a cycle of endless output. It teaches you how to shift your team’s focus from shipping features to achieving outcomes.

Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri provides a roadmap for becoming a truly product-led organization. It’s about creating a strategy that connects company goals to user needs and empowering teams to solve problems, not just build a list of features.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: For your next project, define a single, measurable “outcome” metric (e.g., “reduce support tickets by 15%”) instead of an “output” goal (e.g., “ship the new dashboard”).

Business Model Generation

(Wiley, 2010)

This book provides the one-page tool that revolutionized how startups and enterprises think about their business. It’s a visual language for strategy.

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur introduces the Business Model Canvas. It’s an essential tool for designers to understand the business context they are designing within.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Sketch out the Business Model Canvas for your own product or company. This exercise will instantly clarify how your design work fits into the larger business ecosystem.

Value Proposition Design

(Wiley, 2014)

This is the deep-dive companion to Business Model Generation, focusing on the most critical connection: the fit between your customer’s pains and gains and your product’s features.

Value Proposition Design by Osterwalder, et al., introduces the Value Proposition Canvas. It’s a tool for systematically understanding, designing, and testing how you create value for customers.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Fill out the Value Proposition Canvas for your main user segment. Are you sure about their biggest pains and desired gains? Use this as a guide for your next round of user research.

Usable Usability

(Morgan Kaufmann, 2012)

This book is intensely practical, filled with checklists and heuristics to improve usability in a way that directly impacts conversions, task completion, and customer satisfaction.

Usable Usability by Eric Reiss is a practical guide focused on improving key business metrics through concrete usability improvements. Essential for UX Designers and Marketers focused on ROI.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Use one of the book’s checklists to perform a quick “usability review” of your product’s homepage or a key landing page.

The Design of Business

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2009)

This book argues that design thinking isn’t just for designers—it’s a powerful method for solving complex business problems.

The Design of Business by Roger Martin argues that design thinking is a core business competency for driving innovation. A critical read for Design Leaders and Business Strategists, it elevates design to a strategic function.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: The next time your team is stuck on a purely analytical problem, try reframing it from the user’s perspective to unlock new, more intuitive solutions.

Obviously Awesome

(Portfolio, 2018)

This book gives you the tools to create a compelling market category and position your product so customers instantly understand why they need it.

Obviously Awesome by April Dunford teaches the importance of product positioning and how to define your product’s unique value within its market context. This is crucial for designers to understand how their work contributes to market success.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Review your product’s current marketing copy. Is the positioning clear? Can you quickly explain who the product is for and what problem it solves uniquely?

Strategize

(Wiley, 2016)

This practical guide bridges the gap between traditional business strategy and agile product development, showing how to create and validate product strategies.

Strategize by Roman Pichler offers a practical framework for creating and evolving product strategies in agile environments. It helps product teams align their work with overall business goals and market needs.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Create a simple “Product Vision Board” for your current product, outlining the vision, target users, needs, and key features. Share it with your team to align on strategy.

7 Powers

(Self-Published, 2016)

This book breaks down the seven fundamental powers that allow companies to sustain competitive advantage over the long term. It’s a deep dive into defensible strategy.

7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer provides a framework for understanding and creating sustainable competitive advantages (“powers”) in business. For designers, it helps in identifying and reinforcing design-driven “powers” like network effects or brand loyalty.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Brainstorm which of the “7 Powers” your product currently leverages or could leverage in the future. How does design contribute to building or strengthening these powers?

Psychology, Persuasion & Communication

Design is applied psychology. These books explore the cognitive biases, motivations, and communication techniques that drive user behavior and stakeholder alignment.

Hooked

(Portfolio, 2014)

This book provides the blueprint for the habit-forming products that dominate our attention. It’s essential reading for designing for engagement and retention.

Hooked by Nir Eyal introduces the Hook Model: a four-step process (Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, Investment) that companies use to build user habits. Understanding this model is critical for both building engaging products and considering their ethical implications.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Map out the Hook Model for a product you use habitually. Then, analyze your own product: Where is your hook weak? Where could you introduce a more compelling variable reward?

Thinking, Fast and Slow

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)

A Nobel Prize-winning psychologist explains the two systems of the mind—fast, intuitive System 1 and slow, deliberate System 2. This is the source code for understanding user decision-making.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a deep dive into cognitive biases and heuristics. It gives designers the scientific vocabulary to understand why users behave in seemingly illogical ways.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Identify one cognitive bias (like Anchoring or Availability Heuristic) and find an example of it in a digital product you use. How does it influence your decisions?

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

(New Riders, 2020, 2nd Edition)

This book is like a cheat sheet for human behavior, offering 100 concise, research-backed reasons why users do what they do.

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk is a reference guide of 100 science-backed psychology principles. A valuable asset for all designers, it provides scientific evidence to justify design decisions.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: The next time you’re in a design critique, use a principle from this book to support your argument. Instead of “I think the button should be green,” try “Based on the Von Restorff effect, making the primary call-to-action visually distinct will increase its likelihood of being clicked.”

Seductive Interaction Design

(New Riders, 2011)

This book moves beyond mere functionality to explore the aesthetics and psychology of delight, teaching you to add personality and moments of joy to your interactions.

Seductive Interaction Design by Stephen P. Anderson explains how to create emotionally engaging and delightful user experiences by applying principles of psychology and motivation. This book is for designers who want to build products that foster user loyalty and brand affinity.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Identify one “boring” moment in your user journey (like a loading screen). Brainstorm three ways you could inject a small, on-brand moment of delight.

Influence

(Harper Business, 2006)

This is the classic, foundational text on the psychology of why people say “yes.” For designers, it’s a powerful (and ethically critical) toolkit for guiding user behavior.

Influence by Robert Cialdini outlines his six universal principles of persuasion: Reciprocity, Commitment/Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, and Scarcity. Understanding these is essential for designing effective calls-to-action, onboarding flows, and social features.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Review your product’s conversion funnel. Which of the six principles are you using? Which one could you add? For example, could you add social proof (e.g., “10,000 teams use this”) to your signup page?

Storytelling with Data

(Wiley, 2015)

This book is the bible for anyone who has to present data. It teaches you how to go beyond default charts to communicate a clear, powerful message.

Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic provides a framework for effective data visualization and communication. It’s essential for UX designers presenting research findings, A/B test results, or analytics data to stakeholders.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Before making your next chart, write down the single sentence you want your audience to take away from it. Then, design the entire visualization to support that one sentence.

Made to Stick

(Random House, 2007)

This book deconstructs why some ideas spread like wildfire while others die on the vine. It’s about designing ideas that are memorable, impactful, and easily shared.

Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath explores the six principles (Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, Stories) that make ideas “stick” and spread. This is invaluable for designers in crafting compelling product narratives and feature descriptions.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: For your next presentation or feature description, apply one of the SUCCESs principles. Can you make your message more “Concrete” or tell a “Story” to make it more memorable?

Contagious

(Simon & Schuster, 2013)

This book dives into the science of viral marketing, explaining the psychological triggers that make products, ideas, and behaviors catch on.

Contagious by Jonah Berger reveals the hidden science behind why certain products and ideas go viral. It outlines six principles of contagiousness (Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories) that designers can leverage to build more shareable and talked-about products.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Analyze a recent successful product launch. Which of Berger’s STEPPS principles did it leverage? How could you apply one of these principles to your current product or feature?

Specialized & Advanced Topics

Ready to go deeper? These books cover the cutting edge of UX, from AI to service design to game mechanics.

This is Service Design Doing

(O’Reilly Media, 2018)

This book teaches you to zoom out from designing single touchpoints to orchestrating the entire end-to-end customer journey—designing the service, not just the screen.

This is Service Design Doing by Marc Stickdorn, et al., expands UX from digital interfaces to holistic customer experiences. It provides core methods of service design, including customer journey maps and service blueprints. A mandatory read for Service Designers and UX Architects.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Sketch a simple service blueprint for a common task, like ordering a coffee. Map the customer actions, front-stage interactions, and back-stage processes to reveal the hidden complexity.

UX For AI

(O’Reilly Media, 2023)

As AI becomes a “black box,” our job as designers is to create the windows. This book shows you how to design for trust, transparency, and graceful failure.

UX For AI by Gavin Lew and Robert M. Schumacher Jr., provides a framework for designing trustworthy and human-centric artificial intelligence. It addresses the unique UX challenges of AI, such as algorithmic transparency and user trust. Essential for 2025.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Sketch out one AI-driven feature in a product you use. Annotate where you, as a user, would need more transparency. Is the AI making a recommendation? Show why.

Game Thinking

(Rosenfeld Media, 2018)

This book goes beyond simple “gamification” badges and points, offering a robust system for designing for user motivation, skill-building, and long-term engagement.

Game Thinking by Amy Jo Kim applies deep principles from game design to product development. It focuses on creating a “player journey” that helps users become more skillful and successful over time.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Analyze your onboarding process. Is it a tutorial or a “learning loop”? Identify one way you could add a low-stakes challenge with immediate feedback to help new users build their first skill.

AI Engineering

(O’Reilly Media, 2023)

This book helps bridge the gap between AI theory and practical application, providing a blueprint for building robust, scalable, and responsible AI systems.

AI Engineering by Andrew Ng, et al., focuses on the practical challenges of building and deploying AI systems. While more technical, understanding the engineering constraints and complexities of AI is crucial for UX designers working in this space to design feasible and ethical solutions.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Attend a meeting where your engineering team discusses an AI model or infrastructure. Even if you don’t understand everything, try to grasp the key technical limitations or trade-offs that might impact the user experience.

Successful AI Product Creation

(Self-Published, 2024)

This book offers practical guidance on identifying opportunities, navigating the development lifecycle, and ensuring that AI solutions deliver real value to users.

Successful AI Product Creation dives into the specifics of bringing AI-powered products to market. It covers the unique product management challenges, from defining success metrics to handling data and ethical considerations, providing a practical guide for product-focused AI initiatives.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Identify an existing feature in your product that could be enhanced by AI. Brainstorm what new user problems AI could solve, and what new UX challenges that might introduce.

Designing Games

(MIT Press, 2014)

This book provides a comprehensive theory of game design, breaking down the elements that make games engaging and meaningful. It’s about designing systems that produce rich experiences.

Designing Games by Jesse Schell is a broad exploration of game design principles, from player psychology to mechanics and aesthetics. For UX designers, it offers a rich source of inspiration for creating engaging, goal-oriented, and intrinsically motivating experiences in any digital product.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Pick a non-game app you use regularly. How could you apply one game design principle (e.g., progression, meaningful choices, clear goals) to make a specific interaction more engaging?

Building AI-Powered Products

(O’Reilly Media, 2023)

This book focuses on the practical challenges and best practices for building successful products that leverage artificial intelligence.

Building AI-Powered Products by Gabe Cohn, et al., is a practical guide for product teams looking to integrate AI effectively. It covers the full lifecycle of AI product development, from ideation to deployment and ethical considerations.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Consider a user journey in your product that currently involves manual effort or frustration. How could an AI-powered feature streamline or enhance this experience, and what new user expectations would that create?

Career & Interview Preparation

The final step is landing the job. These books are specifically designed to help you crack the product design interview process.

Decode and Conquer

(Product College, 2017)

This book provides a structured, repeatable framework (like the famous CIRCLES method) to systematically break down any product design question.

Decode and Conquer by Lewis C. Lin is the go-to guide for product management and design interviews at top tech companies. It teaches you how to structure your thinking, communicate clearly, and impress your interviewers.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Pick a common app on your phone. Verbally walk through the CIRCLES method (Comprehend, Identify, Report, Cut, List, Evaluate, Summarize) to answer the prompt: “How would you improve this app?”

Solving Product Design Exercises

(2022)

This book is a collection of real-world product design exercises with detailed, step-by-step solutions, showing you what “good” looks like.

Solving Product Design Exercises by Artiom Dashinsky is the perfect companion to Decode and Conquer. It focuses on the practical application of design thinking frameworks in an interview context, with tons of examples and visuals.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Set a timer for 25 minutes. Pick an exercise from the book and try to solve it on a whiteboard or in a notebook. Then, compare your process and solution to the one in the book to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Cracking the PM Career

(O’Reilly Media, 2021)

This book offers a comprehensive guide to navigating a career in product management, including insights into various roles, interview prep, and career growth.

Cracking the PM Career by Jackie Bavaro and Gayle Laakmann McDowell provides a detailed roadmap for aspiring and current product managers. While centered on PM, its sections on interview preparation, understanding product roles, and strategic thinking are highly valuable for UX designers looking to partner effectively with PMs or transition into product leadership.

💡 Pro Tip & Action Step: Review the interview questions section for PMs. Practice answering 2-3 of them from a UX perspective. This will help you articulate your design impact in a business context.