Desk References for Interface Design

Timeless UI texts for your desk
February 2021

I've always liked the idea of a desk reference: a large book you keep near your workspace with all the essential information you need to get things done. Electricians often have a code book they might keep in their truck for quick reference. Psychiatrists might keep a copy of the DSM-5 on hand for help with diagnosing of patients.

Desk references embrace the idea that being a professional doesn't mean you know everything about your craft, but that you do know where to find high-quality and reliable information on a subject when you need more clarity.

Unfortunately, a canonical (and peer-approved) desk reference for interface design doesn't really exist. For new designers, this can lead to a lot of unhelpful searches that provide low-quality information from unreliable sources. So, it's helpful to become familiar with a few of the places you can go to get "desk reference quality" information about whatever you're trying to build.

Here's the 7 interface design desk references I consistently return to:

About Face (4th edition)

Alan Cooper's classic on interaction design is the closest thing approaching a desk reference in both size and scope. Co-authored by industry experts and now in its 4th edition (with modernized examples), it deserves a permanent place on your desk.

Alan Cooper's About Face sitting on a desk. Some sticky notes are sticking out of the top.
Fig. My personal copy of About Face. Adorned with sticky notes from a recent project.

‍About Face is best used when you need to go "back to basics" on whatever you're working on. You'll find lengthy explorations on the basics of layout, workflows, error states, data entry, and affordance.

At almost 700 pages, It's not a book I'll likely ever read cover-to-cover, but I find that on almost every project I do, it gets opened at-least once for some clarity.

Designing Interfaces (3rd edition)

It's helpful to have a book of interface patterns on hand as well. Especially in the early days of a project when you're still working out the details of a solution. Tidwell, Brewer, and Valencia's Designing Interfaces is perfect for this.

The designing interfaces book sitting on a desk. There's some sticky notes pointing out of the top of the book.
Fig. My personal copy of Designing Interfaces. Also adorned with sticky notes.

The book is neatly organized around various interface design problems like navigation, user input, visualizing data, managing lists, and actions. Each section includes various design principles to consider and then a stack of high quality examples from real apps.

I find it a perfect companion when you're trying to match the right pattern to the problem you're solving. Even better, the book just received a 3rd edition (2020) with updated examples.

WCAG 2.1 & WAI-ARIA

It's also important for all designers to familiarize themselves with both WCAG 2.1 and WAI-ARIA. These living documents provide essential information on designing and building accessible interfaces that everyone can use.

WCAG 2.1 provides a set of recommendations around how to make web applications accessible. Each guideline has specific "success criteria" you can use to evaluate each aspect of your interface on accessibility principles. In many jurisdictions, it is the canonical source for this information, but it's worth checking to make sure that's the case for your country.

An example of the WCAG 2.2 guidelines. Documentation for 1.4.1 "use of color" is shown
Fig. Beyond just guidelines, the documents also provide techniques for achieving each criteria.

It's also worth getting comfortable with WAI-ARIA: a sibling of WCAG 2.1 that provides more specific guidance for complex applications. The authoring practices provide in-depth examples for how to design accessible components with complex interactions like tabs, modals, toolbars, and more.

On first brush, these documents can seem quite intimidating, but spend a half-day giving them a read and you'll find they're clearly written and well-structured. A great technical reference.

Normal Nielsen Group

Founded by two of the most eminent UX practitioners, Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, Norman Neilson (NN/g) is a UX research/consulting firm that provides a host of high quality information on building useable interfaces.

The primary differentiator with NN/g's content is that it is almost always backed by real usability research done on real applications. Their articles and reports should be one of your first stops when trying to understand the key usability principles of many user interface patterns.

An article from Norman Nielson's website. The title reads: modal & nonmodal dialogs: when (& when not) to use them.
Fig. A sample article from NN/g's website. They provide nuanced and actionable insight on many interface design topics.

I often use NN/g's articles as a good starting point for my own research on a new project. I was recently working on re-thinking some modal patterns in my current role and their article on the subject was essential to my final approach.

Refactoring UI

On the visual design-side of the craft, there's Refactoring UI. Originally targeted at engineers who want to make their applications look great, the book has quickly become popular with designers too.

The book does an excellent job of highlighting lots of tiny details that can make an interface feel "off" and showing you specific tactics for tidying things up. Spending a weekend with it can be a significant boon to your visual design skills.

A sample tip from the book. The title reads "Use fewer borders" with a sample interface with too many borders and one with them removed.
Fig. An example of the type of content found in the full book. Easy to implement tactics for your interfaces.

It's a book that I find myself returning to often near the end of projects when I'm trying to get specific spit and polish details like spacing, box shadows, and use of colour right.

Material Design Guidelines

On the surface, Google's Material Design Guidelines might only appear useful to you if you're building an application within their ecosystem of products, but it has quite a bit more to offer beyond that.

An example page from the material design guidelines showing principles for designing dialogs.
Fig. The guidelines include detailed looks at how to implement specific types of elements into your designs.

Almost every page of the guidelines are full of high quality principles for designing interfaces in general. You'll find guidance on icon design, typography, motion, form inputs, and a whole lot more.

I find it particularly useful to hop into the components section and review the detailed thinking on how/when certain components like dialogs, menus, and tabs should be used.

Human Interface Guidelines

Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) are an essential resource if you're building anything within the Apple ecosystem. Similar to Google's documentation, you'll find reams of detail on how to implement Apple design concepts across iOS and macOS.

A page from the Apple HIG showing two different approaches to navigation.
Fig. Apple's design docs are concise, but full of powerful product design concepts.

But the heart of these documents are the more general principles they promote about making great products. You'll find lots of little nuggets around topics like: writing great button text, creating consistent navigation elements, building responsive layouts, providing user feedback, and a whole lot more.

It's also surprisingly brief. I personally find this quite inspiring: several decades of building user interfaces broken down into a small collection of actionable principles. The perfect desk reference.