by David Mccandless
Living in the Information Age we are constantly bombarded with data. David McCandless’s book presents infographics to help us make sense of it all, using simple, elegant ways to understand information too complex or abstract to grasp any way but visually.

by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec
For one year, Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, an American in London, mapped the particulars of their daily lives as a series of hand-drawn postcards they exchanged via mail weekly, creating small portraits as full of emotion as they are data, both mundane and magical. Dear Data celebrates “the infinitesimal, incomplete, imperfect, yet exquisitely human details of life,” in this charming and graphically powerful book.

by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant
“User Friendly” reveals the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. In this essential text, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change.

by Jamie Munger and Rudi Van Dael
The basic premise of human-centered design is to put beneficiaries at the heart of the design process. For policies and projects, a human-centered design approach can benefit people’s lives by contributing to a deeper understanding of their challenges, aspirations, and dreams. This book discusses how human-centered principles and methods can be applied to improve the design of policies and projects to increase positive impacts.

by Bon Ku and Ellen Lupton
A simple overview for people learning about design research in healthcare settings and how to translate into insights and share them. With examples and case studies that range from drug packaging and exam rooms to internet-connected devices for early detection of breast cancer, this book makes a case for applying the principles of design thinking to real-world healthcare challenges.

by Bruce Hanington
“Universal Methods of Design” distills each method down to its essence in a format that helps design teams select and implement the most credible research methods suited to their design culture. The text and accompanying photos and graphics of this revised classic resource are delivered in a concise and accessible format perfect for designers, educators, and students.

by Jim Kalbach
The JTBD playbook is a useful methodology for aligning stakeholders on focus areas for research. This book helps organizations turn market insight into action and shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering. The JTBD methodology and its variants provide a nice overview from a design perspective rather than business perspective. 

by Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers
Generative design research is an approach to bring the people we serve through design directly into the design process in order to ensure that we can meet their needs and dreams for the future. This book introduces an emerging domain of design, not only to the academic design research community, but also to those in the business community charged with the development of human-centred products, systems, services, and environments.

by Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, Laura Whitworth
“Co-Active Coaching” teaches the transformative communication process that allows individuals from all levels of an organization – from students to teachers, and direct reports to managers – to build strong, collaborative relationships.

by Todd Rose
The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don’t even question it. That assumption, says Harvard’s Todd Rose, is spectacularly—and scientifically—wrong. This book highlights why it’s important to meet with a diverse range of research participants.

by Caroline Criado Perez
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the root cause of gender inequality and research, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, UK, and around the world, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé is a fascinating look at the implications (and dangers) of not being inclusive of gender in the design research process.

by Kelly Walters
The book highlights the unique narratives of twelve Black, Brown, and Latinx design educators, from their childhood experiences to their navigation of undergraduate and graduate studies and their career paths in academia and practice. Their impactful stories offer invaluable perspectives for students and emerging designers of color, creating an entry point to address the complexities of race in design and bring to light the challenges of teaching graphic design at different types of public and private institutions.

by Bob Johansen
The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we’re restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. This book shows how a new way of thinking, enhanced by new technologies, will help leaders break free of limiting labels and see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world.

by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby
A practical guide for everyday futuring in a complex world, “How to Future” builds on more than a decade of experience translating the approaches of foresight—envisioning possible futures through a structured process—into a flexible, design- and innovation-friendly approach which can be used for forging better futures. This book doesn’t predict the future—it provides tools and practices that enable better understanding of possible futures and their impacts, and how to prototype ideas that engage others in these futures.

by Elliott P. Montgomery and Chris Woebken
Conversations about the future are often overly simplified and based on popularized visions of what could be. This book illuminates the authors’ work to democratize futures research, elucidating strategies culled from think tanks and futurists as well as models and techniques they’ve developed for organizing collaborative futures explorations. Their approaches introduce a range of visioning methods that, when shared with non-futurists in community and organizational forums, could profoundly influence our ability to envision possible futures.

by Jennifer Gidley
Explains the history of our conception of the future from the emergence of the theory of linear time in ancient Greece two and a half thousand-years ago, and looks at the way human beings have prophesied, foretold, predicted, and controlled the future.