Top 7 UX Research Books
UX research is the foundation of successful design and development. Good research is about asking better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. It’s something every product designer should do, and which everyone can learn.
Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
Erika Hall distills her experience into a brief cookbook of research methods. Learn how to discover your competitive advantages, spot your own blind spots and biases, understand and harness your findings, and why you should never, ever hold a focus group.
Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal
Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk
This guide helps to combine behavioural science and research with practical examples on everything from font size to online interactions. “What motivates people?”, “What grabs and holds attention?”, “What makes memories stick?” are some of the questions this book will answer.
Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research by Jeff Sauro
The is a practical guide on how to use statistics to solve common quantitative problems that arise in user research. It addresses questions users face every day, including, Is the current product more usable than our competition? Can we be sure at least 70 percent of users can complete the task on their first attempt? How long will it take users to purchase products on the website?
Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior by Indi Young
Learning users’ mental models is one of the best ways is to understand their reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. This is a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful.
User Research: Improve Product and Service Design and Enhance Your UX Research by Stephanie Marsh
This is a practical guide that shows how to use the vast array of user research methods available. It covers all the key research methods including face-to-face user testing, card sorting, surveys, A/B testing and many more.
The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide by Leah Buley
The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you’re a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.
Want To Learn UX Research?
Try Interaction Design Foundation. It offers a comprehensive UX research course that covers all essential topics, such as What qualitative user research is and why you should do it, How to fit user research into your own design process, and How to make your research matter by communicating effectively about your research results.
This post contains affiliate link(s)
