Reading List: UX and Personal Development

I compiled a UX-focused reading list that filtered out the painful-to-read books so that you don’t have to.

I’m not a bookworm, so when a book is boring or fails to deliver value, walking on a floor filled with crushed glass sounds like a better idea to me.

My focus wasn’t to create a pure UX-only reading list. I wanted a list that covered subjects that allowed me to be well-rounded and well-versed in equally important topics as a professional and an individual.

The reading list focuses heavily on UX and Design and touches upon Product Management, Entrepreneurship, and Interpersonal Communication. I also included two “flavoured” sections that interest me: Personal Finance (Investing, mostly) and BlockChain.

This list is a living document that I am actively curating. I will add books to this list based on my ability to answer the following questions with a resounding “Yes!”:

• Did I read the book?
• Did I learn anything new?
• Did I enjoy reading the book?

I did not list these books in any particular order.

Full disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases on the books you purchase using the links I listed. Any commission I might receive will be at no extra cost to you.

UX

• Delta CX: The Truth About How Valuing Customer Experience Can Transform Your Business
• Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience
• Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience
• Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research
• The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide
• Universal Methods of Design:100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions
• Interview Techniques for UX Practitioners: A User-Centered Design Method
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products

Design

• Design Like You Give a Damn
• Design of Dissent
• Thinking with Type
• Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Product Management

• Product Leadership
• Hypothesis Driven Development
• Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
• The Mom Test

Entrepreneurship

• Lean Start-up
• Personal MBA
• High Output Management

Interpersonal communication

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Radical Candor
• Never Split the Difference

Web3 and Blockchain

• The Bitcoin Standard
• DeFi and the Future of Finance
• Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

Investing and Personal Finance

• The Intelligent Investor
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
• The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing
• The Simple Path to Wealth
• The Richest Man in Babylon
• Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Suggestions?

Feel free to reach out if you have any book recommendations! I am always up for a good read.