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required reading
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, 2002 edition.
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Anybody who has ever complained that "they don't make things like they used to" will immediately connect with this book. Norman's thesis is that when designers fail to understand the processes by which devices work, they create unworkable technology. Director of the Institute for Cognitive Sciences at University of California, San Diego, the author examines the psychological processes needed in operating and comprehending devices. Examples include doors you don't know whether to push or pull and VCRs you can't figure out how to program. Written in a readable, anecdotal, sometimes breezy style, the book's scholarly sophistication is almost transparent.” Gregg Sapp, Idaho State Univ. Lib., Pocatello
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additional readings
Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom by Marina Umaschi Bers, 2007.
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An excellent introduction to how children learn by playing with and developing their own interactive robotic devices.
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A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Young, 2003.
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A Technique for Producing Ideas reveals a simple, sensible idea-generation methodology that has stood the test of time. First presented to students in 1939, published in 1965, and now reissued for a new generation of advertising professionals and others looking to jump-start their creative juices, this powerful guide details a five-step process for gathering information, stimulating imagination, and recombining old elements into dramatic new ideas.”
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How to Use Your Eyes by James Elkins, 2000.
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“Elkins, associate professor of art history, theory and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, says that our eyes are too good for us, taking in so many things that we tend to focus only on what is important at the moment. "What happens if we stop and take the time to look more carefully? Then the world unfolds like a flower, full of colors and shapes that we had never suspected." Whereupon he takes close looks at 31 things and at "nothing." (Looking at nothing, he observes, turns out to be quite hard to do: "Our eyes will not stop seeing, even when they have to invent the world from nothing.") Among the 31 things are an old painting (not for its picture but for its craquelure, which reveals much about the history of the painting), an x-ray, the periodic table and a sunset. The result is a book that is visually stunning and mentally stimulating.”—Scientific American.
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While You're Reading by Gerard Unger, 2006.
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This book is about everything that happens while you’re reading, in front of your eyes and inside your head; and about what type designers, typographers and graphic designers bring to a page to make reading happen.Two examples of tantalizing questions will be answered: How is it possible to read without seeing any letters? How much hidden typographic knowledge does the average reader possess? Other subjects covered in this book include: legibility; the philosophy of typographic layout; invisible typography; pattern recognition; the reading process; engrams; the ergonomics of letterforms; letterform familiarity and use; typeface choice; type design; negative space and illusions; the role of the serif; the universe of signs; typography & language, and more. Gerard Unger is a prominent typeface designer, graphic designer, author, and design educator. He is based in Bussum, The Netherlands.”—Amazon Book Reviews.
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Behind the Design: Designers on Designing by Brian Arnold and Brendan Eddy, 2007.
Design and the Creative Process, Daryl Moore, 2006.
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Design and The Creative Process offers probing insight into successful and effective design across multiple disciplines, all from the critical perspective of the designer. This fact-based study of successful design solutions-from movie-title sequences to logo development-examines in revealing detail the elements and nuances of the creative process . Provocative examples of powerful design solutions give readers access to methods they can adopt to develop their own processes and skills, while biographical insight into the minds of an international group of creative thinkers validates design's place in our global society. The featured designers are as diverse as the disciplines they represent and serve as beacons of creative success in the pursuit of effective design solutions for today's complex but integrated environments.”
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Ways of Seeing by John Berger, 1990.
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We don't see things, we see the relationship between things and ourselves. Chapters 1 and 2.
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