Here are my “desert island” selections:

1. Buxton B. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann; 2007; Reason: A beautiful exploration of the creative side of design.

2. Cooper A, Reimann R, Cronin D. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. In: Reason: Seminal thinking on interaction design with good behavior for actual people and their goals instead of focusing on features and technology. Indianapolis: Wiley; 2007.

3. Goodwin K. Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services. In: Reason: An encyclopedic coverage of the UX design process A great resource for answering design process questions. Indianapolis: Wiley; 2009.

4. Heath C, Heath D. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York, NY: Random House; 2007; Reason: Not a UI book—rather, it’s about effective human communication of ideas. While a different domain, the concepts are surprisingly similar to UI Is Communication.

5. Johnson J. Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann; 2010; Reason: An approachable summary of the human psychology behind design principles.

6. Krug S. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: New Riders; 2005; Reason: An approachable introduction to UI design that presents many useful UI design principles.

7. Nielsen J. Usability Engineering. Chestnut Hill, MA: Academic Press; 1993; Reason: The “bible” of usability engineering. Required reading for anyone doing usability studies, plus the foundation of usability heuristics.

8. Norman D. The Design of Everyday Things. New York, NY: Basic Books; 2002; Reason: Now my second-favorite UI book recommendation. It’s well named—Norman explores intuitive UI design by understanding the design of everyday things.

9. Redish J. Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content That Works. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann; 2012; Reason: An excellent, communication-focused approach to writing for the Web. Required reading for anyone working with UI text.

10. Wroblewski L. Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Brooklyn, NY: Rosenfeld Media; 2008; Reason: An excellent, focused treatment of an important subject with a strong communication angle. LukeW came dangerously close to saying “Forms are communication.”.