Hacker News Reader

Comment by imjonse | Hacker News Reader

Unless you read The art of war you cannot possibly become a 10x ninja developer. /s

More seriously, I have read the design of everyday things about 10 years ago and it was one of the most boring books I have ever had to go through. I only remember doorknobs and something about affordances. Read refactoringUI as well, some vague shiny UI tips of which can't remember any but 'have decent spacing'. I still can't design even a simple form. I am starting to suspect that if one wants to be good at web design one needs to start doing lots of web design until one gets better. Reading books may come later to place that practical knowledge in some coherent mental framework.

View on HN

That’s interesting. I went through that book not that long ago and I found it fascinating. I had a hard time putting it down.

I found that the concepts he covers in that book can even be applied for good software API design.

Also, he did spoil doors for me. Pretty much every building I go into now annoys me because of the stupid door handles they pick.

> I am starting to suspect that if one wants to be good at web design one needs to start doing lots of web design until one gets better. Reading books may come later to place that practical knowledge in some coherent mental framework.

This is true, but it's true for anything. Reading a programming book won't teach you to program unless it presents problems you can build on actively throughout the reading. You need applied reps, otherwise you'll at most get some vague inspiration or enjoy/hate it.

This is why I don't read practical books anymore unless I'm prepared to practice what I'm supposed to be learning about during the course of my reading. This is also true for videos.

That's quite interesting. I'm reading design of everyday things right now, and has been very valuable for my product (SaaS,drag/drop). Not actually to build it, but designing parts.(mockups etc)

A lot of it is common sense, but only in hindsight.

These books are a solid foundation for design education, but also design is its own deep field of expertise that you’re not going to learn after a a book or two. Both things can be true.

"Refactoring UI" won't make you a good UI designer on its own, but it's a great place to start. It's the perfect book if after making some software you feel like the design is amateurish and want to know how to start improving it.

And then if you're interested you can dig deeper into colors, layouts, types...

I’d love to learn about colors if you know any layman level books about it. I picked up something about color theory that was way over my head.

I can't remember most of the stuff I read. Doesn't mean having it on the bookshelf as reference is a bad idea. I think most books are like that anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com