The best Industrial & Product Design books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> it's like they think i'm only on their site to earn rubies

They're nudging you for continuous interaction. The idea is to get you to make it a routine.

Relevant book recommendation:

https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

The best book to read as a developer is The Design of Everyday Things. If every developer read it, the software world would be a better place.

He recommends in the lessons to check out “how to draw” by Scott Robertson with Thomas Bertling

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=how+to+draw+by+scott+robertson&qid=1575254385&sr=8-1

For the uninitiated - 'Hooked - how to make habit forming products' is on pretty much every start-up's bookshelf in Silicone Valley.

https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

If you really want to draw, I'd suggest picking up How To Draw by Scott Robertson.

It leans more towards technical drawing, but one could apply the techniques learned to many types of creative drawing. There's an app you can download that scans certain pages that will link to video tutorials as well.

It's a hefty tome, but don't let that scare you off. A beginner with a willingness to practice will find their skills improve significantly, but you gotta put the time into practicing, no two ways about it.

Once you find you can handle the basics, I'd suggest taking a figure drawing class, or drawing from life in general. Community colleges are great for this sort of thing, since it would be very inexpensive compared to art school or private lessons. Anyway, good luck!

How to Draw

Commonality of design.

Both are objects meant for throwing by hand. It would follow there is an ideal size for handheld thrown objects, and therefore handheld thrown objects would be the same size.

Same reason doors you push and doors you pull have different handles and it feels wrong when the wrong handle is used for the wrong side.

Read The Design of Everyday Things to learn more.

Have you ever read Unuseless Japanese Inventions? You remind me of this and it's probably why I enjoy your content so much.

learn to use 3d tools and stick to the fundamentals

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1540762345&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.com/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

don't bother learning art or how to draw. focus on technique and draftsmanship.

you're looking at 10 years though if your gonna do it solo. you need your drawing skills, then comic skills, plus writing comic scripts, plus plot skills, character design, and marketing/sales skill.

i gave up. now i just draw hentai and furry porn. life is good.

Hey, I just graduated from IIIT BBSR, now I'm at IIT BBSR doing research. If you need detailed guidance please PM me direct or I usually attend Quora Meetups ( Reddit BBSR subreddit is dead ) or Dev Meets in BBSR. We could meet in person for a nice chat.

Here's a short outline on what I think you should do:

Individually:

• ACM ICPC is really important. Focus on this. So is Google Code Jam.
• Focus only on C/C++/Java and Python. 4 Years won't still be enough. For making your website/portfolio you could learn HTML/CSS and JS. For some frustration and joy, add a functional language, my top pick goes to Haskell.
• Find a passion. Competitive isn't going to take forward very far as it's basically solving solved questions. It's practice. Passion in a field of CS or maybe something applied.
• Open source contributions and designing habit forming products. Check this book by Nir Eyal which goes by the same name.
• Read Code Complete 2, Pragmatic Programmer, make stackoverflow your Facebook. Don't answer if you can't, but read. Read. And code.
• Apply for Internships! Startups are nicer as the team is small so you'll learn a lot of new things.

Group/Social stuff:

• ACM ICPC is a group event. Finding 2 friends in your college won't be difficult, I guess, who share the same passion.
• Teachers aren't just bad in your college, they are present at every college. Ignore them and let's rather be graceful than sulk with remorse.
• You have the whole city to explore. Go grab an Ola/Uber and visit institutes or email Profs you want to work with. BBSR has really nice people provided you search right.

Above all, don't do something because it's the trend. Do if it's fun. Sorry for the brevity and not much of an expert advice on the job/software product market as my career is mostly research and a bit of entrepreneurship.

For the very best of times,

Ankit

If you haven't done so already, I would give this book a read: https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Management/dp/149197379X. It sounds like your org falls into a couple of traps explained in the book and potentially it helps you to vocalize your concerns in a compelling way.

Personally, I am a big proponent for shipping features fast and often, but only if you have a good feedback mechanism set up. Have the sales team fill in a 2-minute feedback form per deal lost/won (this can be built into most popular CRM's) detailing reasons on why this deal was lost/won, look at the adoption of new features in tool like Amplitude, Mixpanel, etc. With this information, you can go to management with a clear story.

I’ve found textbooks to be the best for this. My favorites are https://www.amazon.com/dp/0500513759/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_NCQZ18FJ7SBXJTK1CHJZ?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 and one called The Materials Sourcebook for Design Professionals.

Check out the book "Hooked"

https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

It's largely an instruction manual for how to build super addictive apps, and driving these highly emotional dopamine responses is a big part of it.

There is literally a very popular industry pop book called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This sits on the shelf of every software product team everywhere.

It does have a chapter discussing the ethics of persuasion though. It's not a terrible, evil book but that that title should tell you everything you need to know about the approach to designing user experiences and the cutthroat jostling for a larger user base.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is a really good general design resource.

In fact, doors that are ambiguous in the direction in which they open are named "Norman Doors" after him.

Learn how to construct and combine simple 3D shapes in space. Once you add the details onto these basic forms, you have your vehicle. It's important to study the common components found on vehicles, so you know what details to add. Learning freehand perspective would also be helpful for what you want to do. Basically, get this book (if you don't want to buy it, try your local library) and read it cover to cover.

I highly recommend reading "Continuous Discovery" - the business and product value should be the no 1 priority and should deeply influence design - to do that effectively we need constant communication with customers, asking more useful questions, and have Product managers, tech leads and team leads on those calls to directly understand pain/use cases, etc that drive value, and then they can translate that into testable hypotheses that you can methodologically work through before your write any code

By the time you're writing the code, you should have a decent understanding of the forest and the trees and you can work quickly and confidently

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933492732/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_FH8D5CGSKBCEK3RB903A

How To Draw: Drawing And Sketching Objects And Environments From Your Imagination

His videos are also very informative. He also helped design the perspective tools in Autodesk Sketchbook

Hooked and Contagious also both touch on this as well.

If anyone in the app development world is perusing here I highly recommend the book "Hooked". Required reading IMO. https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

If you want to develop more drawing skills, anime is cool but try to draw more things from life. It will actually improve your anime drawings as well :)

Here's a really good book to use https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

You should have taken a manufacturing class in college, pull out that textbook. This is another interesting reference: https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Processes-Design-Professionals-Thompson/dp/0500513759

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I'd also go ask the machinist and fabricators in your company for suggestions. Or maybe ask if you can shadow them for a day or two. Most people are happy to help and would appreciate that you want to learn what they can teach you.

I'd recommend picking up How to Draw and learning how to think in three dimensions when you construct things on your page. It's deceptively empowering to be able to put blocks of volume down in perspective and work with them like Lego bricks from your imagination.

So I see you clarified that this is for a group of PMs. I'm a technical program manager for an internal facing SRE group on a large SaaS product's platform group. The group I'm talking about is entirely voluntary, but are my tech leads, managers, some principal engineers, and managers, plus the incident management group that can basically represent where there are any problems across our whole "customer" base.

I usually start with "What are you working on now?" and that fills out the start of the board. Then as we go along certain net new ideas will make it in. We'll discuss and argue it for a bit, and then it either gets punted right there or we start doing some discovery work. If it's something feasible, we backlog it.

As far as how do I balance them? Idk, just continue to talk about all the ideas on the board and things get shuffled organically over time. Tell the teams about political pressure or supply chain issues or silly exec asks and let them do their own prioritizing. If something really needs driven, I'll use this to know where I need to be jumping in to project manage or yell at a finance guy.

TL;DR: it's Melissa Perri's discovery/OKR process, that creates a kanban managed backlog which we review in a weekly stand up/argument hour.

Scott Robertson presents this concept very articulately with Cone of vision and perspective. You might want to get this book. It would be a great investment if you want to keep improving.

Book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

The algo feeds what people want see. Creating bubbles where someone rarely sees anything to challenge their beliefs, be it political or otherwise. Because seeing conflicting ideas and arguments gives people discomfort. The algorithm doesn't want to create discomfort, it wants to create clicks and engagement.

Social media uses rules from gambling like never give someone the idea of a loss. Facebook won't notify you when someone unfriends you. Twitter won't notify you when someone unfollows you. There's a whole (perverted) psychological science behind it. I can highly recommend te book "Hooked" if you want to learn about it.

It is all very bad in many ways. I find it saddening you can't really agree to disagree with people anymore. At least online its a big issue. In real life not so much, people are much more reasonable. But you didn't do any of that, which is nice! I think we don't agree on many things but we can stil have a conversation without name calling. Rare but good, thank you!

https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

Yeah. There is something hilarious about an extremely highly up-voted post calling 85% of all people idiots. Presumably a decent chunk of them up-voted this post.

Also presumably the OP considers them self in at least the top 15% intelligence of all people - and they work in retail...sure guy.

A customer walking into a store they've never been to before will face some level of confusion/disorientation compared to a retail worker where that store is their entire world - they know every corner of it. Doesn't make either of them "dumb as rocks".

I worked with mechanics who struggled with pretty basic math but could take an engine apart with their eyes closed. Which of is more "intelligent"? People are people. We are good at different things.

There's an interesting book, The Design of Everyday Things, which really describes in detail how people interact with objects/environments. A big theme is that if someone is struggling to interact with your object/environment/system they aren't stupid - your thing sucks.

Hi there! I'm a UX/UI Designer and from what I've read you could have what it takes to be a UX Researcher or a UX Designer. One of the foundations of UX is Cognitive Science, the first guy to use the term "user experience" is Donald Norman who has studied (and currently teaches) Cognitive Science for years. You could try reading one of his books (one of the most well-known books in the Design field): The Design of Everyday Things to see if you're interested in the subject.

I'd also suggest maybe doing the Google UX Certification available through Coursera, it's a good introductory certification that'd get you in the right path to apply for a trainee or even an entry level job.

If you have any questions let me know, I'm 30 and I've worked in tech for the last 4 years :)

I've heard very good things about the book How to Draw by Scott Robertson, although I've never gone through it myself. I have heard that it takes a lot (A LOT) of time and patience to get through but it is valuable.

And of course Draw a Box.

As stated above: manufacturing processes for design professionals

Also Process

Since you mentioned SVPG, you can look into their risk framework since you are pretty early on with your product. Combine that with Teresa Torres’s continuous discovery framework and you should have the framework to quickly focus on a prioritized list of what to build with first after you’ve derisked all your ideas and hypotheses on what to build.

Competitive landscaping and user research/concept testing will probably be your best bet here early on. Map our your customer journey, identify painpoints, and then identify opportunities. Use the assumption mapping framework from Teresa and use that to drive what you define as your MVP to build with a prototype and get that in front of your potential users as soon as you can.