Resources
Share a resourceExamples, recommended readings, methodologies and websites — linked to the framework.
Recommended ReadingUser Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play
A century-spanning history of how user-experience design quietly rewired the made world, and the hidden rules it runs on. A readable account of the SDF's procedural facet — the methods that became so standard we stopped noticing them.
Recommended ReadingUniversal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design
The classic cross-disciplinary reference: a hundred design principles, from the 80/20 rule to Ockham's razor, each defined and shown in practice. A toolbox for the SDF's Procedures component and its procedural facet — the shared methods and rules-of-thumb the discipline reasons with.
Recommended ReadingToy Design: From Concept to Realization. A Guide for the Designer
Guerrieri's practical guide to designing toys — the tools of the trade, and the deeper craft of listening to children and choosing forms and colours that communicate beauty. It joins the SDF's Humans component to its semiotic-communicational facet: designing meaning for the youngest audience.
Recommended ReadingThinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-thinking Techniques
Michalko's much-loved handbook of creative-thinking techniques — structured exercises for cracking everyday problems in unexpected ways. A pure play in the SDF's Procedures component: the disciplined craft of generating ideas on demand.
Recommended ReadingThink Simple: How Smart Leaders Defeat Complexity
Segall, an Apple insider, makes the business case for simplicity as a discipline — cutting complexity to focus on what matters. Useful to read against the SDF's complicated-versus-complex distinction: simplifying what's merely complicated is real work, though wicked problems ask for more than tidying.
Recommended ReadingThe Sustainability Design Book
A practical sourcebook of sustainable materials and products — furniture, lighting, accessories — for designers and conscious consumers alike. It runs the SDF's Sustainability motto straight through the Technological component: which materials and objects actually earn the label.
Recommended ReadingThe Story of Stuff
Leonard's book-length version of her viral documentary, tracing the hidden life of the everyday 'stuff' we buy and throw away, and its cost to environment, economy and health. A galvanizing entry point to the SDF's Sustainability and Economics mottos — consumption as a system that can be redesigned.
Recommended ReadingThe Story of Design
Charlotte Fiell's sweeping overview of design's eras — the movements, materials and pioneers — set against the social, cultural and political currents that shaped them. It reads design through the SDF's historical-social facet, taking seriously that design is a political act.
Recommended ReadingThe Responsible Object A History Of Design Ideology For The Future
A history of socially and environmentally committed design — from William Morris and the Russian avant-garde to Papanek and the FabLab — framed by the waste our age will leave behind. It threads the SDF's Sustainability and Social-Responsibility mottos through the historical-social forces that have long shaped 'responsible' design.
Recommended ReadingThe Laws of Simplicity
Maeda's ten compact laws for balancing simplicity and complexity across business, technology and design. A meditation that pairs naturally with the SDF's complicated-versus-complex distinction — knowing when to reduce, and when not to.
Recommended ReadingThe Industrial Design Reader
An anthology tracing the ideas, movements and milestones of industrial design from 1850 to today, in the words of its makers and critics. A documentary backbone for understanding how design Outcomes came to be what they are.
Recommended ReadingThe Fundamentals of Product Design
A cohesive walk through the whole product-design process — from materials and manufacturing to ideation, CAD and market research. A teaching text that touches four SDF components at once: the Technological means, the Procedures, the Partners a product needs, and the Outcomes it becomes.