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Join the UX Mastery Book Club!

We love books here at UX Mastery. Without a doubt, reading is one of the most straightforward and accessible ways to build up your UX knowledge. Even better is having the opportunity to discuss, question, and confirm your understanding with your peers.

That’s why we decided to start the UX Mastery online book club! With so many fantastic books on UX and related topics, we hope we can give you that extra motivation to get reading.

Our very first book, decided by popular vote is The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

It’s available on Amazon2 for $12.85 (Kindle) or $13.61 (Print)

Here’s a blurb about the book:

Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious-even liberating-book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization.
 

The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.

The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how-and why-some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

How book club will work

All book club related activity will take place over in the UX Mastery forums in the Book Club category.

Every week we’ll read a chapter, then discuss in forums.

We will kick off each week with one or two broad questions to consider before reading, a couple of key observations to go through on your own directly after reading, and then open it right up for opinions and other questions in weekly discussion thread.

How to get involved

Book club officially kicked off on 5 June, but it’s never too late to join. Find all the details over in the forums.

Happy reading!