Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design Flexibound – January 1, 2010

Review is for both the Kindle and hardcover versions of this book.An easy to use, high level reference of various design principles. A good reference for students, designers, user interface experts or anyone involved in creating, maintaining or managing a product. The language is concise, the principles are presented in an easy to understand manner.Each principle is summed up at the highest level in the subtitle with a more detailed description in the body. A list of related principles is included and in some instances visual aids. Footnotes are at the bottom of each section.The hardcover is an attractive book with the blue spine being a glossy finish and the white part being matt. The paper is a medium weight with a nice feel and a matt finish.The Kindle version faithfully follows the book but has the added benefit that e-books have such as search, contents viewable alongside page views, bookmarks, highlights, links, notes etc. which of course makes it much more effective as a reference.I generally use the Kindle version more often on my laptop where the reader is in color and there is greater viewing space for graphics. When reading it on the Kindle Paperwhite the experience is still enjoyable but not to the same level.Pros:- Covers a wide range of design principles- Information is presented in an effective way- Text is concise and clearly written- Related principles are presented for further study- Graphics are informative and directly demonstrate the principle- Hardcover is attractive and has a nice feel to itCons:- For the hardcover there could be a quicker way to look up principles. The contents do a good job however something like tabs might help for quicker reference without having to return to the contents page- For the Kindle version, the graphics and illustrations often fall well below the text and so lose some of the effectiveness they have in the hardcover edition where they are easily viewed alongside the text.

So here's the thing. I'm a UX/Web Designer. But I'm going to speak to designers of all trades. As a designer you have two options: 1) Keep doing what you're doing copying trends and following the crowd or 2) Get this book and be one unique badess mother fluffin design wizard.That's less than half-kidding. I was introduced to this book via a professor a couple of years ago. We had regular assignments where we had to use certain design principles for our assignments. We were using individual pages, so we were only exposed to around 30 of the 125 contained in this book. But man did it help me. It will really challenge your perceptions of design and encourage you to think critically and intentionally. Now by that, I don't mean this book is some informative how-to. It's strictly set up to give you a principle, the definition, and several clear examples. The best part is that these principles are not only universal, but also immortal. They aren't theories or things that can be disproven. They're principles that you'll be using 5, 20, 50 years from now (assuming you're still designing then...). So do yourself a favor and get this book.

A real gem. This book has a very useful structure, almost like an encyclopedia - it takes you to major principles of design in few words per principle, explains them, gives examples, and cites some basic references. I think almost anyone will find something they did not know in there, or something that did at least make them think. This is not a textbook, nor a true professional encyclopedia, but a high level exposition of stuff that works. For what it's worth it obviously takes cues from Christopher Alexander's "A pattern language", by the goal and by the way it is organized. It is less coherent within the realm of design than "A pattern language" is within the realm of architecture - it does not completely form a body of ideas consistent within themselves. But this is simply because the principles covered are of various types and apply across disciplines (say, psychological, physical, etc...). I saw this book in a coffee shop (of all places) and had to buy one for myself almost right away.

Lovely idea and format. I would imagine that this book is an valuable supplemental reading/reference for students as well as professional product/graphic designers. The references to seminal works that defined each principle were an excellent addition to the book.The description indicated that this was a cross-disciplinary text so I was somewhat disappointed that I found that few principles that applied specifically to the environmental design disciplines and even fewer examples that clarified how universal principles might be used in environmental design -- for example modularity was defined solely in terms of modular electronics when it is widely used in furnishings, interiors and buildings. However, one could quibble about the inclusion/exclusion of each principle and example and perhaps the range of scale is too great to include environments in a robust way.The title is a bit confusing "universal design" is a term that is used by environmental designers to indicate an approach towards inclusion of the widest segment of the population in design solutions (including disabled people, etc). Interdisciplinary design principles may have been a more clear description of the authors intent.Overall a valuable book -- I would certainly recommend to industrial/product design students and other related disciplines