Designing Interfaces, 3rd Edition cover
Designing Interfaces, 3rd Edition
by Jenifer Tidwell, Charles Brewer, Aynne Valencia-Brooks
ISBN: 9781492051954
Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
harulf · 2026-04-29 · Original thread
In a UI course I took at uni (~2009) we had Jennifer Tidwell's book which was pretty much exactly what you're asking for, though not catered for mobile due to smartphones just having come out. Seems like her most recent edition has a lot of mobile focus though:

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-interfaces-3r...

The following will give you a good understanding of UI design.

Number 3, Designing Interfaces, has a coherent set of principles.

1. [Don’t Make Me Think](https://sensible.com/dont-make-me-think/)

2. [The Design of Everyday Things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things)

3. [Designing Interfaces, 3rd Edition](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-interfaces-3r...)

4. [Nielsen Norman Group Interaction Design: 3-Day Course](https://www.nngroup.com/courses/interaction-design-3-day-cou...)

5. [Apple Human Interface Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...)

6. [A Dao of Web Design](https://alistapart.com/article/dao/)

7. [Usability Testing](https://www.nngroup.com/courses/usability-testing/)

It’s important to practice, not just read. The term is “dogfooding”.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Getting_start...

Finally, probably first of all, it’s worth thinking about whether your user interface is harmful to the people using it, and changing if so:

https://www.deceptive.design/

https://www.humanetech.com/key-issues