"Universal Principles of UX" is a great read to pick up for any budding UX enthusiast or industry professional. It's a collection of 100 ideas, principles, and tips that are essential when working with user experience, as well as some intertwining concepts for user interface.

As a UX writer who's relatively new to the field, I've found the layout and the writing style to be really approachable. I love the use of visual examples and case studies to expand on the different principles, making it easy to imagine how you can apply each of them on a case-by-case basis. This will definitely be my go-to at work.

The book Universal Principles of UX by Irene Pereyra is deemed a cross-disciplinary encyclopedia. It explains User Experience in 100 guidelines with clear explanations of each practice.
Irene Pereyra has years of experience in the field of UX and her own design studio, Anton & Irene. It is with this experience that Pereyra has put together examples of these guidelines in use. Not only are you reading from an expert in the field, but you also get examples based on real work, and an illustration to hone in on the principle being explained.

At Curating Edits, this book came at a perfect moment, as I have come across several people who have asked for recommendations for books on User Experience, and UX/UI Design and it felt repetitive to only have a few go-to books on the topic.

The Universal Principles of UX is not a technical how-to book. It will not teach you how to create the perfect User Experience. In the best way possible, you are seeing an actual example, which makes it easier to visualize topics that you come across while learning UX and starting your career in UX.

The categories in this book are: Consider, Empathize, Define, Research, Design, and Validate. The principles you will read about are “Design is not neutral”, “Make the choice easy”, and “Some complexity cannot be reduced”. My favorite which will help many in UX/UI are the principles: “Map the ecosystem”, “So you think you can scroll”, and “Don’t grade your own homework”.
Another great point about this book is that it refreshes what you read. It guides you back to earlier principles depending on the category you are reading from. That was helpful as it reinforces what Pereyra is communicating, again in addition to the visual and the real-life example. Pereyra's experience of working on the Nickelodeon app was my favorite example along with the illustrations. Loved it!

This book describes 100 UX principles and presents graphic models or representations of each. It’s no textbook, more of a quick reference or introduction, presented attractively, as one would hope for a book on this subject! This book belongs in most workplaces, I think, since most all organizations rely on interfaces in some way. The concise explanations of UX principles might make it easy for designers and their clients to find common language improve their work.

I have been curious about UX for sometime now and I was excited to see that this book was coming soon.

It proved to be both interesting and insightful. I plan on purchasing a physical copy to have at home.

Aside from Irene Pereyra making a book that people can learn from, it is quite pretty and would also make a great coffee table book.

A nice and welcoming introduction to UX - User Experience. As more and more of us work in tech-related businesses and most of us are internet users, it can be of interest to almost everyone. Written in plain language, with short chapters and lots of examples, it was nice to read in short chunks. I think the print version is recommended in this case.


Thanks to the publisher, Quarto Publishing Group – Rockport Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

A inviting and thorough introduction to UX principles, perfect for newcomers to the field and experts alike to browse for inspiration. Based on the digital copy, which is attractively laid out and thoughtfully presented, the print edition will be giftable for graduates and perfectly at home alongside art books on coffee tables. Thank you to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Rockport Publishing for digital review copy.

This book explains 100 strategies for User Experience Design. Each strategy contains a visual representation. This is an excellent book for those who want to start with UX Design or are curious about it. Beautifully designed book. Recommended.

With a background in graphic design and web development, I was excited to see what was in this book. It is a collection of individual concepts in design, each presented as 2 page spread with a brief overview and a related graphic. The content does not need to be read in order. Not topic is covered in great detail, and while the book describes itself as including case studies, they are really more of examples. I'm not exactly sure who the audience for this book is. It is not in depth enough to be used in UX education. Perhaps it is to serve as an introduction to the components of UX design, or a reminder of the concepts that designers may have overlooked. The books is nicely laid out and visually appealing. The concepts are important, but this is definitely more of an overview of the topic.

This is a book where the author espouses certain principles while demonstrating them both in anecdotes and by example, she’s an expert in her field. In the case of this book, the field is one of design.

I confess to being both a design fan and a critic. I detest anything poorly designed while admiring those things well done. The examples cited by the author make great sense while the book’s layout itself is a pleasure to see. I enjoyed reading the book so much I now have done so several times just to experience the way it cleanly conveys its message. I do have some quibbles with some of the author’s statements and would have liked to discuss some of her anecdotes.

For example, toward the start of the book, she explains how her team designed user interfaces differently when the target markets were either children or old people. I’d have liked to have seen how well those specialized interfaces worked when tested against normie UIs and normie users. That is, would normies have done better with, say, the children’s interface than their own? If not, what was the difference? Would a child’s UI enhance discoverability in normies?

The author does well as long as she sticks to the subject. A few of her statements where she wanders into the political side made me embarrassed for her. Happily, there are few.

For me, the capper delight conveyed to me by this book is only indirectly related to the book itself. One day after reading a few Principle entries, I closed the book and then got a design inspiration not in any way related to the contents I’d just been over. I’m a former pro but now a hobbyist fine art photographer who now has a bit of a project thanks to this book’s stirring of my gray matter.

I can easily recommend this book both to designers and users – the latter who will no doubt enjoy comparing the often superb designs expressed in this book with the all too often miserable ones we so often encounter in life as well as understanding how great designs achieve their greatness.

This is definitely a “something different” review for me. I want to thank Quarto / Rockport Publishing for making this available to me prior to its release date (March 7, 2023). Wearing my professional hat, I manage an online industry supply chain service. My background is the supply chain, not software, and certainly not design or UX, and so I jumped at the opportunity for what looked to be a good overview of UX principles.

And that’s exactly what this book is. For an experienced UX designer, I’m not sure this book would provide much in the way of new information - although, candidly, I know exactly zilch about what else is published in this field. But for someone working UX adjacent, this was exactly what I needed. I imagine it would also be equally good for someone new (or aspiring) to the field.

As the title suggests, this is an overview of principles, rather than a text book on how to follow them. While I read it cover to cover (and in digital form), I think this book will work much better in print. I really can imagine it as a glossy hardcover on someone’s coffee table, or in an office, for people to dip in and out of, flicking through until something catches your eye for a deeper dive.

Accessible and insightful and beautifully laid out - really, would you trust a book on UX that wasn’t a joy to navigate?

The principles that stood out to me for further consideration:
-Broken pages shouldn’t feel broken
-A word is worth a thousand pictures (aka, that icon is less ubiquitous than you think it is)
-Not all data needs to be visualised
-First and last items are remembered most
-Friction isn’t always bad
-Don’t just design for novices
-Interrupt only when necessary

Clearly, this is a book for a specific audience, but year on year there’s a lot more of us who are indeed working UX adjacent. This is a well-timed book and a great resource for vast swathes of digital professionals.

I found this interesting to flip through. Each set of pages covers a topic in the UX process. I have a background in ID, so there's some crossover that allowed me to appreciate this book. However, I think it's more of a coffee table book than any guide in general of UX.

A good UX primer or reminder, hether you're new to the discipline or trying to get back to basics. While I think claiming everything here to be universal is debatable (it's hard to find anything that is), it's a good read to get UXers thinking.