Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users?
12 terrellbm 22 4/17/2025, 10:54:28 PM
Hi HN!
With AI making it easier than ever to create software, it feels more important than ever to understand how to speak to users
That said, I feel like there's a ton of content online on how to build, but far fewer recommendations on how to figure out what users want and what to build that avoids confirmation bias, false signals, etc.
I'm looking for recommendations on insightful books (or other resources) that others have personally found helpful for developing user interviewing skills, framing good questions, and generally becoming better at interacting with real-world users.
What has helped you bridge that gap between the code/AI/product creation side, and actually communicating with users?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions! :)
1. Find out what users wants. The answer to that is research and the only book I have is Just Enough Research by Erika Hall. I also found Essentials of Business Research Methods by Joe Hair Jr. et al.
2. Build the thing that the user wants. That's mostly the real of Software Requirements and I have two candidates for you:
- Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right by Suzanne and James Robertson
- Software Requirements by Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty.
3. Build something that the user likes and that he can use. That's UX and I have three candidates this time:
- Observing the User Experience, 2nd Edition by E. Goodman and M. Kunlavsky
- Understanding Your Users, 2nd Edition by K. Baxter et al.
- The UX Book by R. Hartson and P. S. Pyla
All of those just emphasize having an objective view of what you want to bring to the users and a rational execution strategy. I haven't read all so I can't judge them, but I believe they will give you enough starting points for you to devise your own method.
Do you have 1 book out of these you suggest above all else? (just wondering where to start :))
https://www.producttalk.org/2021/05/continuous-discovery-hab...
And
The mom test
Are the ones I’ve used the most as a product manager trying to talk to customers every week.
I like the framing around discovery being an ongoing 'habit' as opposed to something that's one and done
- Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen
- Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
Do you have a favorite out of the 3?
Thanks for the recommendations!
Making Users Awesome guided me towards the mindset shift needed to build product better, and Deploy Empathy gave me the exact questions to ask in customer interviews when I was stuck.
Thank you
https://a.co/d/5UHzfNK (amazon link)
Any interesting tidbits from the book you'd like to share?
Always have thought it was more around design rather than talking to users but I think sympathizing is the first step
Thanks for the rec!
Definitely will give it a read! :)
Seems like a good book overall! :)
Downloading the sample