Building a design library

I need your help putting together a design thinking shopping list.

by Nathanael Boehm on 24 June, 2010

I’m putting together a shopping list of design thinking books and resources (such as method card decks) for my organisation to populate a project design/thinking room I’m helping fit out and I’m looking for your recommendations. Design thinking, service design, Government 2.0, communications, strategy etc.

I put out a poll a week ago and received the following suggestions:

Thoughtless Acts – Jane Fulton
Sketching User Experiences – Bill Buxton
Change by Design – Tim Brown
Design Thinking – DMI
Designing Interactions – Bill Moggridge
Everyday Engineering – Andrew Burroughs
Glimmer – Warren Berger
Basics Design: Design Thinking – Gavin Ambrose
The Designful Company – Marty Neumeier
Wired to Care – Dev Patnaik
ThinkPak – Michael Michalko
Thinkertoys – Michael Michalko
Open Government – O’Reilly
Groundswell – Charlene Li & Joshua Bernoff
We-think – Charles Leadbeater
The Living Company – Arie P. De Geus
In the Bubble – John Thackara
The Journey to the Interface – Sophia Parker
Age of Conversation 3 – Drew McLellan
The New Rules of Marketing and PR – David Meerman Scott

Do you have any other recommendations?

I’m consolidating all new suggestions that come in into this list.

// purecaffeine.com: user experience design, social experience design, social media, Gov 2.0, design thinking and service design blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

Jeff 24 June, 2010 at 1:33 pm

Hi Nathanael, you’ll find some overlap with your current list over at servicedesignbooks.org along with a few other titles in that vein.

Greg Ash 24 June, 2010 at 9:18 pm

I am really enjoying:
The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier

Bill Buxton 26 June, 2010 at 5:51 am

Tough call. There are really a lot of books that have appeared over the years that deal with design thinking to one degree or another. I confess that far more than one would like are full of block diagrams and academic theories about the topic – yet never give any evidence that even a small critical mass of designers follow the technique identified. If topics such as “the importance of multiples”, sketching, critique, “collecting reference material”, “persistent/peripheral shared display of sketches and references”, etc. are not part of the discussion, then I would approach the book with a certain amount of scepticism. Although, I confess that this reflects my own biased view. But upon what is that bias based? Partially my own direct experience as both practitioner and teacher. Partilly having spent 8 1/2 years (when at Alias|Wavefront) having many of the world’s top designers and design firms explain their process to me, and partially from reading everything that I could find on the topic. So, since you asked for books, here, for example, is a list of the books that are in my personal design library.

http://billbuxton.com/bill_buxton_design_library.html

Yes, I have them all – to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife!

THX

Nathanael Boehm 30 June, 2010 at 7:45 pm: Unfortunately Book Depository was sold out of your book so I couldn’t get another copy for the office library :(

Reply

Kshitiz 26 June, 2010 at 1:28 pm

Thanks for the wonderful compilation ! :)

I would add “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to the list and also “The Design Way” by Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman.

Nathanael Boehm 27 June, 2010 at 10:08 pm

Thanks for all your suggestions, and Bill … wow what a collection!

Nathanael Boehm 30 June, 2010 at 7:41 pm

Ok the final list of books I ordered – this includes requests outside our strategic communication, designing thinking and social media teams from the rest of the marketing and communications area:

Age of Conversation 3
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780982473979/Age-of-Conversation-3

Basics Design: Design Thinking
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9782940411177/Basics-Design-Design-Thinking

Change by Design
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780061766084/Change-by-Design

Critical Marketing
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780470511985/Critical-Marketing

Design Thinking
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781581156683/Design-Thinking

Designing Interactions
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780262134743/Designing-Interactions

Eats, Shoots and Leaves
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780007329069/Eats-Shoots-and-Leaves

Engage
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780470571095/Engage

Evaluating Public Relations
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780749449797/Evaluating-Public-Relations

Everyday Engineering
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780811860543/Everyday-Engineering

Facebook Marketing
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780789738028/Facebook-Marketing

Flow
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780061339202/Flow