While interaction design is mostly concerned with the of defining the behavior of products and systems that a user can interact with. Which typically centers around complex technology systems such as software, mobile devices, and other electronic devices [1] .

While IxD is young field there are tons of great books to help budding and established interaction designers.

interaction_design_reading

  1. From Concept to Consumer.

This is a cracking little book, Its short and to the point.  The book explains nearly all of the aspects of commeriazling a project and includes working out a BOM and pricing your product. The book has solid theory around the commiseration process and also gives some nice case studies that Philip had worked on.  The book includes a section called “Industrial design maters”,  Its nice to see a non-design person notice the importance of Product / Industrial design.

By Philip Baker. £15.19 – Buy it.

  1. Designing for the Digital Age.

This book is a true beast, at 739 pages.  I only got this book last week and it is superb.  It covers the “Cooper” Design process as outlined in About Face 3. But, goes into more practical examples of how to undertake the work.  The amount of practical examples of good and bad work is great. Kim shows you how to make a persona, What a good Mood-board looks like, and how to write design documentation.

Along with it this book breaks down the roles of Interaction Design, Visual Design and Industrial Design. In doing so, I think Kim has made one of the best Industrial design process books.

By Kim Goodwin. £30 – Buy it.

  1. Making things Talk

This book talks about process that Kim Doesn’t.. and that’s Making stuff, and New stuff that we haven’t had before. Tom has created a book full of easy to understand explanations of micro-controllers along with PHP and Ethernet code to get projects connected to the Internet.  The book goes a step further and provides a examples for a group of micro-controllers. He explains and shows code for three RFID readers.  While he doesn’t explain the fine details of HEX communication he has created a great book.  If I had this at college, nothing would be safe from my screwdriver, and everything would be hooked up to microcontroller.

By Tom Igoe. £17 - Buy it.

  1. Air 1.5 Cookbook

This book is a lot drier than others in the list. Like all of the O’Reilly cook books it just gives you code snippets to help you. In the case of Air 1.5, these code snippets are Air Specific so the code will make you Air Application look a lt slicker.

By O’Reilly. £17 - Buy it.

  1. Idiots Guide to Understanding the Brain.

This book was left over from Ben Sykes, a member of the IxDA Dublin. This book covers all of the basics of the brain, and touches on the basics of neuroscience.  This book is very introductory, and is a good starting point if you want to understand more about peoples underlying human behavior.

By O’Reilly. £7 - Buy it.

6. Getting started with the Ardunio.

This book is an introduction to the Arudunio, but If you are going to shell out £10 just buy Making things talk.  This book covers the basics of the Arundio, but I think it should really be free with Arudino.

// Note: Need to fix affilate ID.