#120 Favorite product design books
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Most of the things that I've got from the books were more abstract, philosophical, and more about how to think about things and less about how to do things. But I think the key with books is to just read them with an open mind without expecting something very tangible in return and seeing where they lead you to.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa, and today I'm joined by my lovely co-host Ioana. And our topic for today's episode is our favorite UX design or product design, books. Let's talk about books. I think it's interesting because we have been running this podcast for four years now about that, and we haven't talked about books before.

much. And it's part of what I think we as designers really love to do. We love to read. We love to share books. I feel every time, even for the Black Friday, you know, this like end of November, beginning of December, everybody has this like gift mood of buying a lot of books for themselves, maybe to set them up for a success next year. And somehow we just figured we never talked about books.

And so maybe if you are looking for some nice fresh reads for your next year, this episode will be useful for you. And also if you're looking for a little nice gift presents for the Christmas that could be possibly helpful. Our goal today is to talk about our favorite design books, reflect on things that shaped us as designers, what are the must-have books to read for every designer to sort of build a strong foundation. And then we can also talk about the book

that we recently read or books we heard about, something that we feel like it's a good book to keep in mind for the future, especially given the current market. And as usual, before diving into today's episode, I also want to mention that this episode is proudly sponsored by VIX Studio, the intuitive way for designers and agencies to design exceptional websites with full-stack solutions, multi-site management, and a built-in AI.

And today I want to mention advanced layout tools by Vix Studio. There are four tools I will be highlighting and the first tool is called Section Grid. Use Section Grid to create complex layouts. You can choose from preset layouts and split cells to adjust the space.

The second tool is called CSS Grid. Now you can control your layouts at every breakpoint by switching to the advanced CSS Grid. Super powerful. Another tool is called Repeaters. Using Repeater is a fast and efficient way to display items with the same design and layout, but

different content. Really helpful for displaying dynamic content, right? And last tool is called Flexbox, our favorite Flexbox, which is a smart layout tool made up of responsive containers, which allows you to automatically adjust to the visitor website screen. Make sure to check out Vix Studio. You'll find the link in our show notes. And now let's go on to the episode topic. Let's maybe just kick it off by asking how have you been, Ioana? How was your last week or two? Well,

Well, these aren't great times, to be completely honest. In Romania, there's a threat to our democracy and to our participation in the European Union and, I'd say, Western values in general. We're choosing our

president and it turns out that we have this cult-like leader, messiah, someone who is very shallow in what they're saying. They're saying very big things but they have no substance and there is no clear plan and there's nothing there but just nice words and people are buying into that and so it's a bit depressing over here. I'm trying to cope. We should

also record an episode about how to cope with life and your job when there's war in Ukraine, when there's a pandemic, and when your country chooses to go back to communism instead of democratic future. We'll see what happens. We're choosing our president this Sunday, so hopefully people will mobilize against the forces of evil and we will remain a free country. We'll see what happens.

On a personal level, I had a pretty nice time lately, except for a back injury from my newly found hobby called CrossFit. Except for that, I was on a short trip to the south of France and I had a couple of days there. And I'm just not saying anything professionally right now. It's because I'm preparing for, let's say, a small break from content and LinkedIn.

and Instagram and all the noise I feel like I needed from a mental health standpoint, but I needed for an intentionality purpose, like really reflecting back on what these years were for me and what's next for me. And so this needs to be done in silence. I'm trying to say no to all invitations that came up for December. I said no for the AI Summit,

where our friend Felix from ADP List invited me and it's really hard for me to say no. It's a huge effort to refuse invitations, but I'm very keen on really slowing down and being more reflective for the next two months. So yeah, that's where I am. Where are you? Still in Czech Republic, but

overall good, overall good. Also quite getting into this reflection mode, thinking about the next year, preparing myself. I mean, I'm still working, you know, daily grind, you know, baby in life and work and community. So a lot of things going on every single day. By the end of the day, I just feel exhausted in a good way. However, like I feel exhausted that I've survived this day and it's literally a proper feeling of I've made it through. I've

kept the balance. I didn't let anyone down. Everything is in order. And that's almost like the feeling I celebrate every end of the day that I've been somehow successful so far. I don't want to jinx it. So three times knocking on the wood. But I feel like so far I've been handling it without...

strong consequences to my health and it's tricky but it's like every day you're so close to doing something wrong because you have so many things on your plate but at the same time you're still managing somehow this is satisfying feeling at the end of the day but i don't know how long i can do this and so by the end of the year you want it or not you're getting into that mood of reflecting or

on how have you been doing this? Is it going to be sustainable long term? Are you going to do the same in the next year? How are you going to focus on optimization for the next year? So these are the questions I'm kind of subconsciously asking myself right now, and I'm doing some reflection already for the future of the community specifically. I'm kind of entertaining the idea of some changes. It means a lot of things, and I'm excited about this. I'm excited to change the dynamics, possibly see if I can

do more and still sustain this so yeah there are a lot of questions I'm not gonna just like throw anything yet because at the moment it's just been a lot of thoughts a lot of thinking a lot of conversations but at the same time it's exciting and I'm looking forward to the next year and

adventures with the community because this whole year I was figuring it out. Next year, I'm hoping to scale it and finally kind of get into the place where I feel really good about things. But it's been an interesting journey this whole day. I'm going to keep all the reflections for the episode. We typically have two weeks or one week before the end of the year. So let's move it there. But yeah, all good on my plate. Many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many

managing and trying to go through the days. One more month to go by the end of the year. Hope everybody's also feeling quite all right, because I think it's a shaky period. Though Christmas mood, it feels like the Christmas was invented to keep us up during the last months of the year, every year. Okay, let's not focus on the hard things. Let's focus on the good things. So let's actually think about education in a way, but also reading books. Reading books for education is fun. You learn something, you feel...

empowered you feel a lot of insights you feel growth you feel maybe joy of learning and and so i felt like maybe we can look back into our past and reflect on what books for us were fundamental were the pillars for our education obviously we started a little while ago already i personally started working as a ux designer 2012 so 2012 it was like whatever 30 years ago now or something and there were not so many books but also a lot of books at the same time there were like books

that I didn't have to choose from. They were already in the market. They were fundamental. They were core books and you couldn't avoid not reading them. And I want to reflect a little bit on how they made me feel and which ones I feel like were super important in the building the understanding. Let's start from you, Ioana. What are the books that you read when you were starting out and which books did make an impression for you?

It's a very interesting question, and I love that we're discussing this topic. For me, it's really interesting as well that we haven't discussed it by now, but and my answers would be different, like five years ago from what they are today. To your point, there was this list of fundamental books that you have to read.

if you want to be a designer. One of them was obviously The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. And then there was this book called Don't Make Me Think, I think by Steve Krug. There was a revisited version, but it's funny that in the beginning, those felt like, oh, these are the Bible books. We have to read them. And then when you...

growing your career, you realize that, for example, Don't Make Me Think was relevant like 20 years ago, and it wasn't relevant at that stage of the tech industry as much. And so I don't feel that the times were very accurately represented in the books we had as options.

But the design of everyday things was definitely a very, let's say, important thinking framework for how to think about design. And I think it's still relevant. But apart from that, some of the publishers like O'Reilly, I think Rosenfeld had design books, and then there was a book apart. And so these publishers were publishing books very often. So there were books about

But I don't know, accessibility, conversational design, so many modern topics. But in the design community, we were only circulating the big titles and things that didn't really feel very applicable to our work. And so I feel that this was something that I realized only after you don't really get the technical knowledge from design book.

or we didn't, right? So in our 10 years in the design industry, I don't feel that I've learned how to really solve problems. I learned how to think about problems, definitely. Like, for example, the first book I want to mention is Just Enough Research by Erica Hall. This book really provided me with a very good understanding of why research is important, why research fails,

why people don't believe in research, what are the things that are stopping us from investing more in this space, and just the idea that we can really use a set of lightweight methods to surface insights and just make more informed decisions. And it's not as complicated as we might think, and research isn't as intimidating. So this book, for example, really had an impact on how I think about design or how I show up in conversations at my job when it comes to research and so on.

But apart from that, many of the other books that really impacted me positively were more philosophical, I think, I think.

just two three titles and then maybe we can dive deeper into them like it was four or five years ago that I discovered Tufti which was a very classic writer and for me it was like oh my god this person is so interesting and there's this book called visual explanations and in it it really teaches you how to build visual communication that's clear and in design I think that's one of the

core responsibilities that we have? How do we make hierarchies and structures that are communicating whatever needs to be communicated? How do we present complexity in a very simple way, visually? And so this book, which is about

visual explanations and things such as how to arrange images and words and numbers, how do you present motion in visual, how do you present processes, different mechanisms. So it felt like cause and effect, how do you present relationships between objects. So this was more of a highly visual by its own title,

book, but it kind of framed the way I think about design. Reframed, reframed. I read it in the mid of my design career. And then there are books that really helped me find my creative voice, like the collection by Austin Kleon. I don't know what's the right way to pronounce it, but the classic, Show Your Work, Keep Going. And there was a third one. Feel Like an Artist, which was also kind of fundamental to thinking about creativity, right? And so where I'm getting at with this

My experience has been, and I can dive deeper into this, my experience has been that the books that really shaped me weren't so much technical books, right? So there weren't design books about how to create wireframes and here's the UX process that you need to swear by and here's how to perform them

I wanted to say design critique, and there was a book that really shaped the way I think about design critique. I think it was Articulating Design Decisions. But most of the things that I've got from the books were more abstract, philosophical, and more about how to think about things and less about how to do things. So this is my relationship to books. What was your experience? That's awesome. And I think we can all hear in your voice, you're thinking always more philosophical, and we can see that

it was probably indeed very responsive to you. In my case, I think when I was starting out, I was romanticizing books. For me, it was always a very exciting thing to do. As somebody who's getting started and like as always, you know, we are all overwhelmed by those imposter syndrome emotion. Like we don't know what we're doing. Who am I even? All those feelings. And when I read the books, it just felt...

cozy and good and like you suddenly know something and it's like accelerating your thinking and without you realizing yet it gives you a lot of information that you might not need when you need this but to the point you were saying i felt so in touch with what you were saying we were reading a lot of the books we couldn't really practically use in our lives

10, 15 years ago, a lot of the books, they were so important and so fundamental. I'm so happy those books were written because I think we are about to use them today. We're using them today in our mindset. And I hope that some of us still have these like fundamental values, principles embedded in how we think.

Just because we read those books 10, 15 years ago. Because only now I think the market is getting to that maturity stage where we could feel a bit more empowered using this knowledge. Design principles. I'm not talking about specifically books where are focused on specialties like accessibility,

content, design systems, whatever, like what all these other parts of the discipline of what we do. Obviously for accessibility 10, 15 years ago, it was absolutely not a topic on the classic IT environment that you worked in, unless you are working with special target groups. So I think back then, a lot of those topics were too early, as you said, but at the same time,

When I read them, I just felt great. And I somehow, maybe because it was written in a good way, and that's why they become so biblical to the community, it was written so well that we just like to enjoy the books. Even though I think subconsciously, if you were working at that period, we would already understand these are not very practical books. You think about the right things, but you don't really work in a place that empowers you to don't make user things. Very often business is incentivized the opposite way.

to make people think, to add more friction, to run the business needs, etc. And so, yeah, that's a little rumble. But the books that I kind of refer to when I'm speaking about these early days and feeling cozy reading them, those are some of the things that you did mention already. So, for example, the obvious one, we all start from Don't Make Me Think and The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. These are the Biblix books for design community. If you haven't read them, what are you waiting for? Like, honestly, how did you not? Yeah.

Fun fact that don't make me think, the revised version we did picked up this year in my community book club. And I was so surprised because turns out what was written there is so relevant right now at the moment. In my work, even some exercises that were suggested, some notions that were suggested in the book,

they gave me some sort of reminder of how to think about solving problems. They gave me a good idea about how people think, how people get confused, how we design solutions that don't make sense. And so when I was rereading it for the book club, you know, what is it like 12, 13 years in my career, I was still surprised that

I reminded myself those core principles that we sometimes tend to forget in the hamster wheel, I guess. And so, yeah, that was very interesting to revisit. Not only the content of the book, but also like my mindset. So yeah, the John MacMasin, the design of everyday things with John Norman, very fundamental. Other things I do remember myself reading were about face. I

think it's by Alan Cooper. When I read that book, I was in the mindset of, so I was studying and my master's at the university, and we focused a lot on design thinking, not on like UI design, not on the digital IT world. So back then I wasn't reading it. I just didn't realize much of the things. I didn't understand the principles of UX, UI interaction design. So when I was reading it, it was too early for me, I feel like, and I felt bored, to be very honest.

The other things that did excite me a lot were things such as Hooked, I think, Hooked by Nir Eyal, The Culture Map by Erin Mayer, and books that were a little bit focused more on the interaction with people, the cultural aspect. The

the social aspects of work. And reflecting back, we're in such a nice reflecting mood right now, end of the year. And reflecting back, I always felt like the reason why I was drawn to the industry, it was always because of the people and how we interact with people. I was excited to be in the hackathon. I saw that you interact and brainstorm with people in the same room near the whiteboard. And this energy made me so interested in joining this industry and

And books such as Culture Map that are particularly talking about how we all interact, how we make decisions, the leadership, the democracy, the top-down, bottom-up, you know, sharing your voice, not sharing your voice, all those aspects of how people collaborate and interact with each other that were described in these books. And I was

so happy to read them. I was like, oh, this is so important. How are we not talking about this? We should talk about this. I feel today, for example, CultureMap is finally getting its way in the market and everybody's talking about the book. But when I was reading it, what is it, like 2015, 16 or something, I was like,

It's so important why nobody's reading this book. Why nobody's like shouting that everybody needs to know those basics. The other one was indeed the Hooked. So I think when I was reading it, I always interpreted it as like, we all want the best for design, right? We read in the book such as don't make me think. So we want the best for the user. So when I was reading the book Hooked,

I was thinking about building the positive habit forming products, right? How to help people achieving their goals. And I think then later, soon 2017, 18, many people started like kind of talking against it. Like, no, you can use Hooked.

principles to build the wrong habits, the market, the black patterns, the unethical design choices, et cetera, et cetera. So then it made me, oh, realize that not maybe all the books are so helpful. So there was a lot of those dynamics. And it's interesting to reflect back on how the books have been sort of perceived by the market in different stages.

And I also like that you mentioned the book that are Show Your Work and Keep Going by Austin Kleon, because I think they were also fundamental for me. I received the book Show Your Work when I was finishing my internship, 2015, I believe. My mentor back then in the agency I worked at gave me this book. I had no idea what this book means. I never heard about this. I read this book as I was leaving Estonia, the country I spent my master degree and internship at and a few startups.

As I was leaving this country and closing the chapter of my life, I was sitting in the cafe, reading this book and being so inspired and realizing how important it is to share what you know, because I was still living in a bubble of imposter syndrome and constantly fearing that people will realize I'm an imposter. And that changed my mindset. And that's part of the reason we're talking with you today, Ioana, because, you know, building this perspective of sharing, that's why we started those Instagram accounts and then started sharing

with the community, all the content. And so it's really great to see that those books contributed to what we are doing today and how it changes our lives as well and impacts everything. Fast forward to the recent years.

Funny enough, I've been catching up on the books that are also fundamental for the industry, such as Just Enough Research, which you've mentioned, and Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Grever, I think. Those are the books I only read for the first time this year. And luckily, because we have the community book club, so these were the books that the community wanted to read. And luckily, I haven't read them. So it's great to revisit them and to, not revisit, but find an opportunity to read them again, because it's

felt for a while like I don't need to read those books. It's the information I already know. Why should I, you know, spend my time reading something I probably already understand? But surprisingly, I did learn quite a few things from especially articulating design decision books. And I feel always more leaning towards those like

social context books, because articulating design decision, it's all about how you communicate with people, how you understand people, how you make your point to different people with different thinking. And it was really reminding to me about those principles. And every time you feel like you're stuck, somebody's stupid, somebody don't understand you, you kind of go back to those basic principles and reset your mindset. So I love this. And I think books are very generally all about building the right mindset and

In the moments when you're down, moments when you're thinking wrong, when you're like stuck in your perspective, books get you back into opening your horizon and broadening it. And it's great to see that the principles that were communicated back there 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, they're bringing back right now.

And they're helping. And I really like that because we have a lot of designers joining the industry today. These books are still on the surface. These books are still talked about. And it's great to always go back and revisit them. Because in the market that's a bit more maturing today, these books make much more sense. So yeah, that's about it. What are the books that you feel like recently were fundamental and important?

important for industry to pick up and read? Maybe the books that are more zeitgeist with the time and how we think and what is important today on the market? Anything that comes to your mind? Yeah. So interestingly, there is one book that I feel really answers your question perfectly. It's called Ruined by Design. It's written by Mike Monteiro. He also has another very interesting book, which is called Design is a Job. That was very educational for me as well. But Ruined by Design is...

I think something that should be part of our design education, like a mandatory part, like when doctors sign their Hippocratic oath and we should also have some sort of, let's say, ethical signature that we give before we start designing and Ruland by Design talks about that.

So it raises the important and deep and painful questions about what it means to design with an ethical framework, with an ethical lens, and what unethical design can do to the world. Mike dives into examples of well-designed products that do harm in the world, like guns and the combustion engine and Facebook's privacy settings.

So it's an important conversation about even if we design something well, if the meaning of it, if the role of it in the world, if what it creates out there is harmful, then it's not good design, even if it works as good as Facebook. Right. So it's a great product. Right. But it's harming the world. So is it good design? It's not.

So these are the kind of questions that Monteiro is raising in this book. It's called Ruined by Design. It really taught me something that I was already intuitively experiencing, that we really have a responsibility and design should be something that empowers users, not exploits users. To your point about how hooked users

became a controversial book after it was very successful. It became controversial. And I know that Nir Eyal, the author, actually wrote another book after a while in which he kind of made a, I wouldn't say apology, but he revisited the harm that he did by writing Hooked, where he taught us how to build habit, building a

addictive products and then years after that he wrote a book called Indistractable and the book Indistractable is about how to regain control how to control your attention and how to be less prone to the addictive mechanics that he was practicing

promoting in the world. So it's very ironic in a way. It's great that he revisited the harm that he might have done. Yes, the book is controversial. It's still an interesting read. For me, it was as well. So the schema that he proposed was very much shared on social media. And it's just an interesting thing to think about. But like the question behind all of these mechanics for creating exploitation or addictiveness is

do we want to do that right and so this is what ruling by design argues we shouldn't use dark patterns we shouldn't manipulate users design should be transparent design should help people make the choices they want not unintended choices not the choices we want yeah i think that's the book that

came to my mind. Do you have any other book you can think about when it comes to like one fundamental transformation? Definitely. There are a few books. And also, interestingly, I'm going to mention the books that I read this year. Also not a part of the book club. I try to read books outside of the book club, but there are that are a little bit more niche and specific. And some things that came to my mind, I feel like they are a little bit more relevant to the practice, to the craft we are working on today. Some of those books that I personally liked,

It's very fun, very small, very jam-packed with interesting facts and quite playful when you read this. It's the book called The Politics of Design by Ruben Potter. It's a bunch of mini stories on how important is the design choices and the impact of them on the society and how people think. And your contribution to how we say, right, we want to change the world.

This is your contribution. Design is a contribution to the world, how it changes everything and how people start thinking differently based on design choices. So I do recommend to check out this book. It is a very small, nice pocket book. I was really enjoying this. I read it this autumn, I think.

During October, when I was sitting outside drinking coffee, enjoying the weather and read it on the bench near my home. And it was really nice. I personally enjoyed the experience. So I definitely am biased, but I think it's a great book. Another book that is important to talk about is the book called Mismatch by Kat Holmes.

I think I brought it up when we had an episode about accessibility and inclusivity this March. Go check it out. Definitely a very important topic. I was reading this book earlier this year. I think this book is overall very educational. It gives a very good idea and understanding on why we live in a world today that is not so inclusive and only why we start doing this today. My mindset also, even five years ago, I'm not talking about 10 years, but five years ago was still not inclusive.

And I didn't realize the point, right? Especially if you work with like early stage startups, you constantly think like, oh, we need to figure out the basics. We need to figure out the business model. Like we cannot think about inclusivity yet. We cannot invest our time into it and how it was wrong thinking this way and then

And this book made me realize some things that I just wasn't open to hear and know at that point. And so understanding and educating yourself was really helpful. But I have to also give a little kind of tiny critique here is that I think I was reading a lot of books because previously I wasn't reading as much in the last years. But this year I've read about

I think 12 or 13 books with the baby and everything. So it's a lot to read one book a month. And I think as I was reading all these books, I just realized that Mismatch was written in a not so engaging way as some other books that I read this year. So it wasn't so playful. It wasn't full of fun facts. It wasn't really like playful, easy read.

but it's very educative. And there were a lot of points when I made myself notes that this is my gap. This is something I didn't know about. This is I didn't realize. So it's important to read this book, even if you don't feel so engaged with how it's reading. I think it's important to read. Other things that I did read this year, I feel like it's a topic of this year for myself, which were the storytelling. And I love this topic. Every book that I saw was the title of storytellings. I was so hooked, so excited, so engaged with all these books.

So the books that are notable and important to Notion in this topic of storytelling, the first book I read this year, the first book we had in the book club in the community was Storyworthy by Matty Dix.

And also this book, it's not specifically about the design, to be very honest, but it's about thinking on telling the stories and how it makes you a better human, better collaborator, better design communicator, all of those things. It's fundamental. It's about almost like a basics, but in a very practical and human way, how you can use this in your life, how everyday lives is full of stories, but you don't realize this.

And then as you build this mindset, I started reading a little bit more design-related books about the storytelling. Other book that we read in the book club that I personally really loved, and for some reason it's a very unknown book, is Design and Storytelling. As simple as that. Also, very fun book. It's

full of pictures, full of reminders about the key design principles and how story is shaping the efficiency of design we are shipping. I loved it. It was breaking down the topics. Really fun to read. I seriously recommend it. I think it's one of the best books I read this year. It was very playful and easy to go through. Very short, but also super fun book to read. It gives you all the reminders you need to know. So like, what's the basics I had by reading the book

story worthy. Like it made me build a fundament. And by reading more specific books, such as The Design is Storytelling, it made me add more principles on how to make it applicable to the actual design industry and everyday work. So yeah, I also could recommend this book. I think the other thing that comes to my mind

As of recently, I just started reading this book, so I cannot say many things yet. But another book that I started recently reading was recommended in my company. And it's the book called The Art of Noticing, Rediscovering What Matters to You. I think it's a good book to kind of rethink where you pay attention, because where you pay attention is what you become, how you think.

So it's an interesting book that I picked for the reading this month in the end of the year. And maybe I'll report back how it goes. So these are the things that are top mind for me. Anything that you feel like we still have to talk about that we haven't talked yet?

yet when it comes to reading, building, using books for your education in the design industry? Anything that you think we're missing out here? Well, I don't feel that there's something very specific that needs to be said about books, right? It's a very personal, subjective, right? So you were mentioning exercises that help to reframe things. I never had that experience.

of getting an exercise out of a book. I mean, maybe for the Design Thinking Playbook, which was a very nice book, even though I wasn't a big fan of design thinking and I still think it's one of the most annoying concepts in design the design world has ever given us. I feel that that book was really an interesting collaboration, a set of

collaboration exercises. And also, I think articulating design had some very clear methods and things that were proposed there. And I think those were very useful. I think Aaron Walter also had emotional design, which also kind of proposed some of the interesting things that I've been experimenting with in the products I've been designing for. But I think the key with books is to just read them with an open mind without expecting something very tantalizing.

tangible in return and seeing where they lead you to. And I think for me, something, I don't know, this is a bit more mystical or wishy-washy, wacky idea, but I feel that I'm always drawn to the books that make sense at a particular moment in my career. So I don't know, even when I go to a library, I feel like I'm just drawn to a certain book

I think maybe it's the power of subconscious, right? That points us towards the messages and content and support we need in the outer world. But I feel that if you remain open, there are memes about designers just buying design books relentlessly, but never reading them. I feel like I was also partly guilty of that, right? So I have 40, 50 design books in my home, but I read like 10 or 12, right?

Right. So and maybe I'm not the right person to talk about books, but the ones I've read, I really had a deep impact on me. So maybe that makes me the right person to talk about this. But the point is to surround yourself with interesting things, objects. These are the facts that carry messages and ideas. And then when the time is right, you will probably reach out to one of those books. And just a very important, I think this is the most important component.

confession I'm about to do. I'm actually working on my first book as well. I've made some progress. It's like therapy for me, but it's also something that's meant to serve as a companion, as helping hand, as a small guide to support designers in different stages of their career with different struggles in their career, like becoming a parent and holding a full-time job or going through pandemics and war and I don't know, just experiencing burnout or

just the imposter syndrome. So it's a book about struggles that we have as designers. And I hope that, yeah, I will finish this book if I have the right inspiration and my subconscious cooperates with me. But I'm also working on this, like everything that I've learned and thought about and all the philosophical thinking

that's going on in my head put into something that would serve exactly this concept, right? So when you need something, reach out to it. Like you will feel like reaching out to it. And it happened to me, not just with the side books. It happened to me with all sorts of books. I realized that in different crossroads or difficult decisions or difficult moments in my life, transitions and so on. I was kind of reminded that

from somewhere in the back of my mind what about that book I feel like reading that book why do I feel like reading it I'll just read it and then there was some reason there was some meaning to it so it's the same with design books just surround yourself by interesting artifacts it's inspirational and then you will eventually reach out when you need it and hopefully I will also design a book that feels like that so yeah that's all I had to say oh this is awesome first of all I'm so

happy to hear you're working on the book because I feel like it will be a very worthy read. I associate you as like this philosophical person, person who cares about therapy reflection and like having this book that supports you in the everyday things and trying to keep you sane and trying to kind of cope with everything that's going on and trying to still stay positive

Save on top of the things is something that I feel like you need to be right in this book. So I'm looking forward to this, but obviously no pressure. So yeah, I'm so happy to hear this news. I think I personally will be the first person buying this book. As of the topic that you just brought up, right? Books needs to be relevant in a certain period of time. I feel the same way. It's so good you mentioned this. I'm also guilty of buying too many books during the Christmas time and Black Friday is constantly

constantly. I have a bunch of books. I used to have those posts on Insta where like every October, every November, look at the books I bought. And then I stack them and I enjoy seeing them on my bookshelves. As we did a home renovation two years ago, we have the whole wall up until the ceiling, three and something meters long of books. And then I have

But I don't read all of them, obviously. Especially now, I don't have so much time, but I have more willingness to read books, which is important. And so, yeah, I'm also guilty of stacking my shelves with a bunch of books. Not that I read all of them. I have a lot of books that I love having there. I feel like they're statements. I have some books that are just decorations, almost like those, you know, they say coffee table books.

That's the type of a book that I would just buy and put on the wall, bookshelf wall, just to remind myself some key principles. For example, some of those books would be the books with, I don't remember all the names of the books, but for example, start with why or don't ask me questions or something. I don't remember all the titles, but like things that are statements.

that are reminders, almost like a postures. And you know, some people express themselves with the postures, with the pages, with little accessories. To me, I also, why? I always felt like the books are statements. It's my postures. It's

It's the posters that people have to see in the back of my room. And so, yeah, that was always an interesting sort of byproduct of buying the books and the real world and how it was applicable. And yes, some of those books I've never read. Some of those books I started, I didn't finish. And some of those books were just like boring, honestly. I'm not in touch with what I can do. One of those books I didn't mention, but I still, I found myself thinking that I want to read this book again. I want to complete this book, was the book called UX Magic.

That was a book published in 2020, so beginning of the pandemic and COVID. I got this book as a present from my company back then. It was a very interesting book. It's The Principles of the Object-Oriented Design. I really love this topic, but my mindset is slightly different. I'm not so structured as I'm thinking. So

So I like this book. I love the concept. So I just never find myself like in line with this, but I'm very interested and I want to learn it. And so I'm keen on learning in this area. And this book always stays at my shelf and I open it time to time and read it, reread it, but then close it, not complete this. So there are also those books that you feel like they need to be there like an artifact.

that sometimes need to be just there, accessible and reachable in the moment when you need it, when maybe you have a project. You know, like they say, right? Don't read more than you can practice or don't learn more than you can practice, I think. And that's part of that principle, right? Sometimes you just need those objects on your shelf to refer back, to look back, to

quickly find that quote, that point, that topic, make a mark. I'm this messy kind of reader who have a lot of marks all over my books. I have, I don't know what they are called, but like those little pins on the book where you have chapters and colorful signs that this is the type of things I need to go back to. And I would use pen so cruelly. I would use pen on the books and I will, you

So to me, it's the way to learn and to engage with the book and having those books on the shelf and looking back and just opening it and finding the exact place where something interesting was mentioned that associated with the way I'm thinking is almost like a little habit, little routine things that makes my day better. So yeah, I think we can stop it there and stop in this positive note.

reflecting on how the books impacted the way we think and our daily job. We are romanticizing books, but also there is a good amount of romanticism in reading and learning. So I'm hoping this episode was at least inspiring to you and gave you some ideas about what you want to read next. If you haven't read some of those books, please do. I think books we mentioned today are very important for

for anyone. So hopefully it was useful. But if you have more ideas about what we should be talking about, book suggestions also are welcome. And if you've learned anything today, or if it was useful to you, please go and check out our other episodes and rate us on the

podcast platform of your choice. We're always excited to see your reviews and we are always excited to see new suggestions so that we can make this podcast stay relevant to you. Thank you everyone and hope you're having a great mood, festive mood, and we'll see you in the next episodes. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.