This is my ultimate 2023 UX and Product Design reading list. Books here cover various topics: from agile development and critical reflection to research, interaction design, and strategy. There are some papers in here, too. 

Some of the books (marked with a star) I can personally vouch for. Other recommendations come from reading lists curated by tutors and module leaders at Falmouth University, and my friends: Leroy Almeida, Abel Law, Ryo Mac, and others. 

Feel free to copy this page, track your progress, share with your friends. Let me know if there are any books you would like me to include.

If you’re looking for more curated lists:
- A list of UX books for the absolute beginners
- UX Books for mid-weight designers

Curated by Kristian.

2023 Reading List

Keynote talk, slide depicting a double diamond, room densely packed with people

‎Paper and Pain on Apple Podcasts

Fresh juicy Uzbeki pilaf, samosa, and bread

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A minimal website of Kristian Mikhel. Senior designer with 7+ years of experience shipping impactful complex mobile and web products. Highly skilled in accessible design and human research, problem framing, end-to-end delivery and testing.

Links: CV · Portfolio · LinkedIn · Twitter · hi@kotsky.me

Projects

Grab Marketing

Designing cross-platform marketing experiences at Grab.
NTUC Web Portal Revamp

Revamped the old portal for the National Trade Union Congress of Singapore. Led a creative team behind the redesign.
AIA Plus

Applying cross-cultural design to future-proof the healthcare superapp.

Side projects

The Accessibility Apprentice

A semiregular newsletter that covers accessible and universal design in the digital world and beyond, accessibility audits and redesigns, tools and products. Useful, actionable tips for designers, engineers, and managers.

In this issue, we will discuss how accessible products benefit everyone, why accessibility is more than a list of standards and formal requirements, and why accessible and beautiful go hand-in-hand.

#05. Accessible doesn't mean ugly.

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/05-accessible-beauty

Discover the importance of critical reflective practice and challenge some beliefs about reflection and its role in our work and growth. Kristian Mikhel suggests a critical reflective routine for individual contributors and gives some practical recommendations that will make reflection meaningful and actionable.

The Art Of Looking Back: A Critical Reflection For Individual Contributors — Smashing Magazine

You’ve all seen them, tiny switches that let you toggle a setting. And maybe, just like me, you sometimes pause, thinking “...Is it on or…

Toggles suck! | Axess Lab

“The password must respect the following rules”, says the platform, forgetting to respect the fundamental rule of user experience. As a person with ADHD, I struggle to read long and complex text, but I bet even someone without attention deficit would not really understand any of it. 

A laundry list of demands is never a good idea, but listing out a set of characters (!) allowed to be used in a password is plain ridiculous.

https://github.com/formbricks/design/blob/main/case_studies/30042023_onboarding.md

Error message: "Post too long for email". Text below: "My blood was boiling, and my brain gave up. I have embraced the pain."

Listen to this episode from Paper and Pain on Spotify. In the final episode of the first season, Kristian and Steve discuss the challenges of socialising as an introverted designer. Is it possible to go off-grid, keep a low social profile and build a successful career in the age of connectivity? How communities we choose to join and build impact our personality and professional growth? Tune in to learn more!---Follow us on Instagram @paper.and.pain.We'd love to hear your story too! Feel free to drop in your story and question at hi@paperandpain.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

13 - Being an introvert

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6tIYxEl0L0b32Qc4SaZF4K

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/07-the-roi-of-accessibility

No, it is not Workday. Walk through one of the worst job application experiences, and learn how to design better forms for everyone.

#02. Probably the worst platform to apply for a job through.

sirkotsky.substack.com/p/02-job-application-form-teardown

Informing the design of olfactory–driven digital experiences for health and wellness.
An applicant statement by Kristian Mikhel.
Background
Smells are underrepresented in HCI, despite having a great potential, especially in wellness and healthcare. This paper proposes a development of a comprehensive framework to inform and guide the process of designing olfactory–driven digital experiences for preventive (holistic) and therapeutic (compensatory) wellness management.
The importance of smells
Scents plays a crucial role in how we remember and experience things: from enhancing our reading and learning (Bordegoni et al. 2017) to capturing ‘the most persistent memory of any space’ (Pallasmaa 2012). Odours influence our emotions and mood, create pleasant ambience, contribute to mental and physical recovery. Environments with a variety of natural scents positively impact patients’ well–being (Dilani 2012).

In this issue, we will discuss how to get started with accessibility at your organisation, establish processes and rules, and convince the people to join the fight for universal product experience.

#04. Moving mountains: how to get started with accessibility at your organisation.

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/04-getting-started-with-accessibility

https://bsky.app/profile/kotsky.bsky.social

Reflecting on my first usability sessions with blind participants: thoughts, tips, and recommendations.

Reflections and learnings from UTs with blind participants | The Accessibility Apprentice

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/01-blind-users-reflections-and-learnings

Keynote speaker in a small room, the slide titled “We are nature”

“An example of a confusing and extremely inaccessible UI that stressed me out an hour ago by @lunchclubai.

Let's have a closer look, inspect, and quickly fix a few things that are wrong with this particular component.

TW: a long redesign thread below.”

Kristian Mikhel on Twitter

https://twitter.com/sirkotsky/status/1653014021988306944

A sleeve tattoo with maple tree leaves by William Morris

If anyone is looking for design books to read, I’ve assembled a huge collection. 

68 books on everything design. Enjoy. 

kotsky.me/library

Please do not forget to add an alt text to images you upload here or elsewhere. Not everyone can see the image, but everyone is curious to know what you’ve posted 😊

Please remember to always add alt attributes to your images. 

People who use voiceover/talkback want to know what’s in your images, too! ❤️

Productive Thursday with Singapore Product Design

Many design discussions leave me speechless.

People obsessing over irrelevant things, profound lack of depth, and worst of all, passionless designers who are less concerned with driving a change and more worried about the consistency of their components.

I’m loosing my flame.

I’m proud to announce that after two months of preparation, together with @kotsky our first design podcast “Paper and Pain” is now live! Our first two episodes are about design system and accessible design. Getting to know more about it on Apple Podcast. Enjoy the show. 😉

If anyone was wondering what I've been up to these past few days: this. 

Spending a week in Uzbekistan with my granny in her motherland, feasting on the most delicious foods and fruits ever. 

Accessibility posts are coming back, right after a short break.

A gentle reminder: 13 Aug, 8am Singapore.

Join a session where I will be speaking about how you can stand out as a designer by doing good things: focusing on accessibility, contributing to open source, etc. 

It'll be fun (maybe) and practical (100%).

mediumday.com

Received a painful rejection, wasn’t shortlisted for an award, and to top it off, couldn’t get my sleeve finished in one sitting and will have to come back next week. 

On the other hand, my redesigned onboarding helped Formbricks double user activation, so the day is saved ❤️

Got tired of having an old website with nothing on it, and went for something extremely minimal as a temporary solution, before I finish building a proper one (if ever).

If you want to get a seat at the big kids table as a designer, learn corpspeak. 

Nobody cares about consistency, user experience, or design systems. 

It is all about annual goals, revenue, retention and acquisition, OKR, KPI, EBITDA, and other scary spells.

Accessible is beautiful.

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/05-accessible-beauty

Wrote an article on critical reflection and how we could desing better practice by challenging our actions, beliefs, and assumptions.  

Give it a read.

A great article on why toggles are bad, actually.

https://axesslab.com/toggles-suck/

A sneak peek into the review of one of the worst job application platforms in the upcoming issue of "The Accessibility Apprentice". 

Sign up for my newsletter to be the first to read all the painful details:

http://sirkotsky.substack.com

My first open-source design contribution went live 🎉

With the team @formbricks, we've implemented personalised onboarding to activate more users through tailored recommendations.

Case study:
https://github.com/formbricks/design/blob/main/case_studies/30042023_onboarding.md

Started something designery with @imwiththou, stay tuned.

Finishing writing an issue of "The Accessibility Apprentice", tearing down one of the worst job application platforms. 

Will be sending it out tomorrow. Subscribe so you don't miss out this epic festival of pain and suffering:

sirkotsky.substack.com

Designers who start their own agency or go independent: where do you find your first clients?

Asking for a friend.

Closing the first season of "Paper and Pain" with another episode of confessions. @stevewang and I chat about being an introvert in the hyper-connected world and talk about the values of community in professional growth.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6tIYxEl0L0b32Qc4SaZF4K

On the ROI of Accessibility. If you've not subscribed to "The Accessibility Apprentice" yet, make sure to subscribe now:

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/07-the-roi-of-accessibility

#FOSSASIA (free open source software Asia) summit. Out of all the participants there it seemed there were only four designers there including myself and @kotsky 😂 

Quite an inspiring experience tho.

A teardown of one of the worst job application platforms is on "The Accessibility Apprentice".

Welcome to the world of pain.

sirkotsky.substack.com/p/02-job-application-form-teardown

A PhD proposal coming together, but I'm still a bit far from having a 1) compelling narrative or a 2) strong theoretical framework. 

But at least it's exciting.

Submitted a job application via Workday just to test the accessibility of Workday as a platform for new applicants, and it wasn’t so bad. 

The experience, on the other hand, was as terrible as you would expect. Let me put together a teardown.

Going live with Eddie from BioDrop on Saturday to talk about designing for open source

How to start advocating for accessibility at your organisation and stay sane.

A new issue of "The Accessibility Apprentice" is here, ahead of my upcoming talk!

https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/04-getting-started-with-accessibility

If Posts had a web interface, I would just move here from Twitter completely. 

Not a huge fan of typing on mobile 🥲

So, Twitter is dead. 

I now have a bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/kotsky.bsky.social) account and a posts account, so stay tuned, I guess.

I'll be speaking at Medium Day on how you can become a better designer by focusing on doing good: from becoming an accessibility advocate to contributing to open source. 

It's online and free, with lots of great speakers and topics.

mediumday.com

Decided to share my learnings and reflections on running a UT with blind users and launch an accessibility-focused newsletter at the same time. 

"The Accessibility Apprentice" is out in the wild. 
 
https://sirkotsky.substack.com/p/01-blind-users-reflections-and-learnings

Never thought I would take up at 6 to make it to a Sustainability talk by 8am, but here I am.

Writing a teardown of the worst job application platform I've ever come across for my accessibility newsletter. 

Subscribe to "The Accessibility Apprentice" now: https://sirkotsky.substack.com/

A weekend with friends is a weekend well-spent.

Got pissed with the Lunchclub UI today and redesigned their time picker component: made it more accessible overall and made some visual tweaks as well. 

Wrote a long case study here: https://twitter.com/sirkotsky/status/1653014021988306944

Suddenly felt like flying to Hanoi for the weekend instead of Ho Chi Minh because why not.

I just want to take a second and thank every single person who has left a reply to my previous post. So much inspiration, so many wonderful ideas!

A lot of it comes down to networking and building human connections. 

Anyone wants to grab a (virtual) coffee and chat? 😉

The engagement on Twitter is in the drain, and I think I’ll be making Posts my new home. 

So, what are we sharing here these days? Sneak peaks of what we’re working on? 😊

Almost 2 years ago, we started redesigning this portal. A talented team of designers, writers, researchers came together to revamp an old website of the trade union of Singapore. 

So happy to see it go live last night, and kudos to the team 🔥

ntuc.org.sg/uportal

Saturday picnic outing with crazily lovely people @kotsky

On an unrelated note, I’m getting a sleeve. 

William Morris is ❤️