Just a quick note on Don't make me think - go to your bookstore and flip through it. There is about two paragraphs worth of an actual material in the book, the rest is a filler. Think - a moderately insightful blog post stretched into a book... it is one of few books that I regret paying for.

Just to add a different point of view: this was probably the first eyes-opener for me, both on writing and design.

I can only personally recommend it :)

How to Choose the Perfect Blue by HAL 9000

Nice! For the TL;DR crowd, it's an article from Google's first visual designer, grousing about the Google culture of testing "41 shades of blue" and arguing if 3, 4, or 5 pixels are proper border widths. Note also that the article conspicuously capitalizes the word Design.

I would love to see a list of the 40 losing shades of blue!

I'm not sure what Au may or may not have been responsible for, but the Android tablet is the first time I've been wow'd by a Google UX. I'd be more interested in seeing Matias Duarte's picks.

The only UI examples that stand out when I think of google are:

- GMail -- more for the rich use of javascript that a stunning UI. Effective, simple, and performant.

- The main website -- simple, loads quickly, etc.

- Android (Froyo and beyond) -- there are elements I really wish Apple would adopt - widgets, unobtrusive notification system, etc.

Beyond those, I really haven't seen a UI/UX example from google worth being wow'd about.

Google Maps should be on that list. Can you remember the sort of maps we used to put up with on the web?

Good call on Maps. I forgot about them. I think I forgot because I mostly use the Maps app on iOs/Android rather than maps.google anymore.

A serious minus that comes to mind on their UI/UX experience is the way they handle image search now. I'm still on the fence about "instant search"

I think you meant to say Google UI. There are a lot of instances where people think Google's UI is not polished. UX is more than just the UI you see on Android tablet. Some notable UX achievements of Google:

- Search

- Google Analytics

- Gmail, gmaps, calenders, spreadsheets, etc

- Groups

UX failures: (and yet had pretty decent UI's)

- Buzz

- Wave

Sidenote - TIL about bagcheck.com, looks pretty cool.

Also useful (but not mentioned): Universal Principles of Design.

Great recommendation. If I could only choose one, it would be this.

I wish my last name were the chemical symbol for a precious metal.