Here’s my findings. Hope it is helpful. I will be conducting a 2014 list in January of next year.

Getting Started in User Experience: Reading List 2013
http://uxfindings.blogspot.com/2014/05/user-experience-reading-list-getting.html

Thanks for your advice. I will order Steve´s Krug ASAP and will look up his other book (Don´t make me think) as well for good measure.

I have also been recommended “Designing with the mind in mind by Jeff Johnson” for a more indepth look into our brain, which I find very interesting. Have you any opinions on this book?

I also really thank you for your tip about getting stakeholders into user testing by making some tests on them. Good psychological trick.

With best regards

Vladimir

If you’re having a hard time convincing clients that user testing is important enough, there are a few strategies you might want to consider. One thing I’ve found effective in large organisations is to ask key stakeholders to be the participants in a short guerrilla user testing session. You can flatter them by insisting that you’ve chosen them because you respect their opinion. It may only be 30 minutes of your time, unpaid, but it can often be a good gateway to a discussion about who else from the organisation may be in a position to provide useful feedback.

Failing that, my advice would be to think carefully about the clients you choose to work with. If you’re choosing to differentiate yourself from a “regular” web designer who gives no consideration to the holistic user experience, but can’t convince a client to invest the effort required to get it right, then let another take that design project instead—it will free you up to focus on working with clients who “get” that UX is important. There are plenty of them out there, and once you’ve built a reputation for that stuff, they’ll come looking for you rather than the other way round.

Hope that helps. Best of luck!

Thanks for yet another great article and great website. I would like to ask for advice about choosing the right book for my experience level and wonder if you could help me.

I´m a selftaught UX designer and have been working (mostly) with UX design for the last 5 years and would like to take my experience to a new and more solid level.

I have been working with digital media for the last 14 yeas and have tried lots of different roles, among them web design and 3D animation, reaching profesional skills in both fields. But it never felt quite right until I found UX design as a discipline and occupation.

I really love UX design since it combines so many interesting fields, but I also feel that my selftaught experience have gaps and my goal is to fill in those gaps as much as possible. I particularly have little experience in user testing skills, since most of my freelance clients refuse to pay for this, no matter how much I have tried to explain the neccesity of this.

I´m now going through your list of books, to find out which are more relevant than others, but wonder also if you have any recommendations for your favorite ones, or ones that would fit a medium skilled UX designer who is self taught.

With best regards

Vladimir Koller