If you work in the field of User Experience, you have to know about the following resources. I will keep adding to this list.
Krug, S. (2013), Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Berkeley, CA: New Riders
This book includes Krug’s Laws of Usability:
1. “Don’t make me think.”
2. “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.”
3. “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what is left.”
Norman, D. (2013), Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition, New York, NY: Basic Books
Formerly known as “Psychology of Everyday Things”, this book introduces the ideas of affordance and mental models. If you see anything by Donald Norman, get it and read it.
Beyer, H and Holtzblatt, K. (1997), Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems, Burlington, MA: Morgan Kauffman
While this hasn’t been updated in far too long, this book supplies the techniques and tips to conduct thorough and effective user studies to identify “real users, doing real work, in their real environment.”
Ertmer, P., Quinn J. and Glazewski, K. (2013) The ID CaseBook: Case Studies in Instructional Design, Old Tappan, NJ: Pearson
This is a series of open-ended instructional design case studies that strengthen and encourage successful problem solving, and conceptual, procedural, and analytical skills to be used with a variety of real-world clients and the execution of creative solutions. Oh, and by the way, I co-wrote one of the case studies.
Also, Performance Consulting, by Robinson and Robinson, and Metaphors We Live By, by George Laikoff.