Card sorting is an effective, easy-to-use method for understanding how people think about content and categories. It helps you create information that is easy to find and understand. In "Card Sorti...
Card sorting is an effective, easy-to-use method for understanding how people think about content and categories. It helps you create information that is easy to find and understand. In "Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories," Donna Spencer shows you how to plan and run a card sort, analyze the results, and apply the outcomes to your projects.
TESTIMONIALS
"This is a wonderful book on a much-needed topic. While card sorting is a basic tool of the trade, it's previously received short-shrift in any practical publication. Donna's done an amazing job explaining (in easy-to-understand terms) what every designer, architect, and researcher should know about the ins-and-outs of card sorting. (You might need to buy two copies, because I guarantee someone will borrow your first copy and never return it.)"
—Jared M. Spool, CEO and Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
"This book is a fresh, clear, practical explanation of the value of card-sorting, how to do it, and how to use the results. Spencer mixes step-by-step instructions and good examples with just enough theory. You'll emerge from this book with new skills to create great user-centered information architectures--and smart responses to tricky questions from pesky stakeholders."
—Tamara Adlin, Founding Partner, Fell Swoop, and co-author of The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design
"I wish we had this book when we first started doing card sorting. It's a fantastic handbook that is full of very practical advice and examples from Donna's extensive experience. We will be recommending it to all our customers."
—Sam Ng, Creator of online card sorting tool OptimalSort
"Donna has put together the definitive work on card sorting, a must have tool for all information architects. If you want to plan, run and analyse your own card sorts, this book has it all."
—Andy Budd, User Experience Director, Clearleft
The field of user experience design is so encompassing that there is a near infinite amount of knowledge to be drawn from other domains. Whilst UX as a discipline is very young it's founded on principles and research from psychology, design and social sciences that give it a definite foot up when it comes to feeling confident in the work we do.
Over the years my UX-related bookshelf turned into a bookcase (or two.) This list is as much about the books that make you think and take a walk as the books that get you to shout "Eureka!" and fix a more immediate problem.
A list of the books I've read - and would keep - on my bookshelves, books I'd recommend unreservedly. I'm trying to think here of 'has this book changed the way I work', rather than simply 'is this UX or not?'
A personal list of my favourite UX Books, in no particular order (not even in reading order) and covering many aspects of the UX practice and theory.
This would be my recommendations to anyone wanting to start working in the UX field.
