

Favorite design books (Irene Au - Google Head of UX) - thibaut_barrere
http://bagcheck.com/bag/5571-favorite-design-books

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eps
Just a quick note on _Don't make me think_ \- go to your bookstore and flip
through it. There is about two paragraphs worth of an actual material in the
book, the rest is a filler. Think - a moderately insightful blog post
stretched into a _book_... it is one of few books that I regret paying for.

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thibaut_barrere
Just to add a different point of view: this was probably the first eyes-opener
for me, both on writing and design.

I can only personally recommend it :)

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naner
_How to Choose the Perfect Blue_ by HAL 9000

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rudiger
<http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html>

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mceachen
Nice! For the TL;DR crowd, it's an article from Google's first visual
designer, grousing about the Google culture of testing "41 shades of blue" and
arguing if 3, 4, or 5 pixels are proper border widths. Note also that the
article conspicuously capitalizes the word Design.

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cpeterso
I would love to see a list of the 40 losing shades of blue!

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jfeldstein2
I'm not sure what Au may or may not have been responsible for, but the Android
tablet is the first time I've been wow'd by a Google UX. I'd be more
interested in seeing Matias Duarte's picks.

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jmspring
The only UI examples that stand out when I think of google are:

\- GMail -- more for the rich use of javascript that a stunning UI. Effective,
simple, and performant.

\- The main website -- simple, loads quickly, etc.

\- Android (Froyo and beyond) -- there are elements I really wish Apple would
adopt - widgets, unobtrusive notification system, etc.

Beyond those, I really haven't seen a UI/UX example from google worth being
wow'd about.

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panic
Google Maps should be on that list. Can you remember the sort of maps we used
to put up with on the web?

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jmspring
Good call on Maps. I forgot about them. I think I forgot because I mostly use
the Maps app on iOs/Android rather than maps.google anymore.

A serious minus that comes to mind on their UI/UX experience is the way they
handle image search now. I'm still on the fence about "instant search"

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keiferski
Also useful (but not mentioned): _Universal Principles of Design_.

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juddlyon
Great recommendation. If I could only choose one, it would be this.

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tastybites
I wish my last name were the chemical symbol for a precious metal.

