UX/UI designers can read a lot of books on design etiquette, user experience design, and the ins and outs of interface design. There are also a lot of books written in other areas that are valuable for UX/UI designers to take notice of. But what about the books that have nothing to do with those topics?

Yes, these are three books that I believe will help you become a better UI/UX designer, even though in none of the content they talk about design. But believe me, they are not randomly selected, basically, I handpicked them based on the following criteria (i.e) I asked myself what are the non-design books that I reference every month that I go back and at least read my notes to get better in my game and that is my communication skills. When it comes to design, it is basically how I practice my UI design skills, whether it is typography, color, UI elements, etc.

So here are three non-design books that I think every UX/UI designer should read. Some will cover topics related to our craft, while others are just valuable general knowledge. This list is by no means exhaustive; you could probably name a few dozen titles just off the top of your head. These are the ones I find myself recommending to people most often, so I think they’re worth taking a look at!

Book №1

The first book is named Peak and it’s written by Anders Ericsson, and this is a very good book for me, and I really like this book because what Anders Ericsson does is basically throw out all of his 25–30 year research in the psychology of expertise, he analyzes almost dozens of different professions, from chess players to athletes, and ask themselves, What makes these people world-class? Is it talent? Is it practice? And he came up with an answer that is called deliberate practice.

What this means is a person who is world-class at their craft. Yes, they put in the reps, they put in the hours, but the way they do it is different than, let’s say, an average or above-average player, and this book basically lets you take a lot of his ideas into your game and basically improve how you practice.

Three things that I learned from this book are

• The first one being I learned that I need a set amount of time every day. So one hour every day, usually it’s the time you wake up that you perform the best, especially if it’s a creative task like design. That is when I put in the work and that is also what his research also shows.
• The second key takeaway I took from the book is You have to know what kind of weaknesses you have in your game, let’s say, for UI design skills, and you have to practice your weaknesses. Practicing your strengths will help you become more efficient, but it will not fill your gaps. So, for example, in UI design right now, for me, I am pretty good at color, and I’m pretty good at typography. What I really struggle with is iconography. I hate designing icons and what I started to do it little by little in my daily routine, I began to design icons and I slowly find that I am getting better in my game and that is also really important. Find a good time every day consistently to practice, hopefully in the morning.
• The third thing I took after from this book is you have to get a mentor. It is very hard, especially if you are a beginner or a mid-level journeyman to improve, then you hit a plateau because there is this thing called unknown unknowns. Because for you to actually find out your weaknesses and practice them, you have to be aware of your weaknesses, which is actually pretty hard as a beginner and that is why beginner to journeyman level getting better at those areas is very difficult, it’s very hard and that’s the third one. Get a mentor, whether it is online or it is in person. For me, I actually bought a design course from somebody that I really, really like and I am also purchasing their basically premium version of the course so that I can have access to them on a Slack channel, so I can ask them questions, I can ask them to review my designs.

Book №2

Now the second book is Discourses by Epictetus, and I started liking this book, especially during the pandemic. So design, like other craft careers, takes a bit of a long time and has a bit less certainty to actually turn into a career like software engineering and I know within the first year, second year, or third year, there is a lot of unknown unknowns, there’s a lot of risks and you worry a lot and this is one of the books that I go back often to actually recenter myself.

Whenever I’m in bad mood, I open a page and read a quote, and I find that this book really does this very well. It basically goes over and the key premise of this is a basic introduction to stoicism and what it does is it lets you assess what you can control and what you cannot and pay attention to only the things you can control and this was especially helpful to me during the pandemic.

I got my first full-time job as a designer during the pandemic, but there are also a lot of things that went wrong for me. I had to find internships and resign and go find another company to work at and some of those things are out of my control and I bet you have those as well and this book helps you recenter fast, so you don’t focus on those, but you focus on what you can control. You focus more on it, you make your portfolio better, you make your projects better, you read more about your niche, in this case, design, and you will get better.

Book №3

Now the third book is Thinker’s Toolkit By Morgan D. Jones. Now, this is a really different book that I never saw anyone recommend, but this had been very useful for me at the offer stage.

So, the first book we talked about, Anders Erickson, is for you to actually learn how to practice your craft, and elevate your game. Epictetus’s Discourse is for you to recenter so you don’t get off balance, fall into major depression, and quit designing and storing and this book basically helps you get really good at problem-solving, but it gives you the tools and I especially use this when I had offers.

So for me when I was looking for my first UX/UI job, I had three offers at hand. I did it in a specific manner where I applied to a lot of companies, roughly 250 companies, and I interviewed with 20 of them almost, and I got three offers at the end of the day over a three or four-month period of time and then you have three offers and you want to make the best choice to find the best company. Simple pros and cons list, for example, won’t be enough, which is what you usually go to, right? You have a problem, you make pros or cons list, but this book offers you 14 other approaches. Like, for example, it offers a toolkit called a weighted matrix.

What that means is, let’s say for the offer, for the job you want, you have three offers like me, and you write your five criteria such as location, pay, an opportunity for growth, co-workers, the product, and the technology. The weighted matrix, the way this book teaches is helps you assess which of the criteria are more important because they should not have the same importance. It helps you prioritize and basically once you put your numbers in, it actually shows you and helps you rank the company you get the offer from. So you make the best estimation, your best choice when it comes to picking the right job for your UX/UI career and I find that it helps me in other aspects of my job as well. It’s a very good book, but as I said, it is especially good for when you are going to interview.

So those are the three books guys and I hope you like this article and I really like books and I really enjoyed sharing these three books with you and I hope this helps in some way.

Thanks for Reading!