Bookshelf
Resources
Books, essays, and references I keep recommending — on design leadership, agentic AI, and the ethics of building things that act for people. Each one links out.
Laws of UX
A crisp, linkable reference for the cognitive principles behind your critiques — Hick’s, Fitts’s, Jakob’s, and all of their bestest friends.
Living in Information
Treat digital products as places people inhabit: “Places convey information. At the physical level, a building’s form conveys to your senses the possibilities for action that it makes available to you.”
Local-First Software
Seven principles for software that keeps working when the network or the vendor does not. The backbone of designing for repair and real ownership. Long-term thinking that isn’t user-hostile.
Magic Ink
Reframes most software as information design, not interaction design — the corrective for every time you are tempted to add another button.
MicroInteractions: Designing with Details
Dan Saffer’s classic deep dive into small functional moments returns to prominence when thinking through feedback mechanics for AI. I’ve recommended this book a lot over the last few years.
Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design
I met Kat while at Google, and she articulates better than anyone how designing for exclusion leads to better innovation for everyone. It is a vital read for ensuring our choices don’t amplify structural biases or leave people behind.
Neural Networks: The Basics
The most intuitive visual explanation of how the models you design for actually work. Know your material.
Neural Networks: Zero to Hero
You too can build a language model from scratch using this handy tutorial series. Overkill, perhaps, but nothing else will demystify AI for a designer this thoroughly.
Objectified
A documentary on industrial design and the intention behind everyday objects. It reconnects you to physical craft and 2009 Jony Ive.
On Writing Well
Interface copy is writing. This is the book that teaches you to cut until only the true words remain.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Both a memoir and a masterclass in the craft of storytelling, Stephen King’s book is fraught with struggle, and it’s one I regularly return to remind myself why creating is hard.
People + AI Guidebook
Google keeps a running guidebook of best practices for designing human-centered AI products. Based on mountains of research.