The Animation Handbook is your guide to using motion with purpose in digital product design—transforming static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by animation expert and two time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod, the book draws on insights from brands like Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple to show how animation can communicate hierarchy, reinforce brand personality, and guide user behavior. You’ll explore the principles of timing, easing, and choreography, and learn how to balance delight with usability so that every movement serves a clear function.

Through real-world examples and practical techniques, you’ll discover how animation can smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and bring emotional resonance to your products. Whether you’re designing onboarding flows for a startup or refining micro-interactions for a global platform, you’ll find the guidance you need to create experiences that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Length: 54 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

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Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

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What’s in Animation Handbook

Motion’s purpose

Why motion matters: it provides context, guides attention, conveys emotion, and invites discovery—bridging the gap between physical and digital with examples like iPhone interactions, Headspace explainers, and Mailchimp’s reassuring send states.

Principles of animation

Seven principles—timing, pacing, staging, follow-through, secondary action, overlapping action, and appeal—adapt classic animation craft to interfaces, using easing, directionality, and subtle flourishes to make state changes legible and human.

Animation collaboration

How teams put motion to work: Zova Fitness prototypes early with engineering; Headspace aligns behavior, easing, duration, and sequencing from wireframes; Google’s Material defines informative/focused/expressive motion; Lyft’s system is intentional, responsive, expressive—and accessible.

Taking animation further

Nuance, consistency, humanity, and fluidity: keep motion purposeful (e.g., restrained map pins), maintain coherent physics (Tinder cards, iOS Control Center), add empathetic cues (typing dots), and design fluid, prototype-driven gestures that feel like extensions of the mind.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Animation Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the author

Ryan McLeod

Ryan McLeod is a puzzle maker and self-taught designer with a masters in Computer Science. He designs and develops the infamous and infuriating game Blackbox, which won an Apple Design Award in 2017. In addition to being a game, Blackbox has also become a testbed for interaction design and accessibility innovation. Off the computer, he cooks a lot and once accidentally bartended the Nobel Prize after-party.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

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• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

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Design Engineering Handbook is a practical guide to bridging the gap between design and engineering—transforming collaboration into a competitive advantage. Written by leaders from The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it offers a clear framework for integrating design and development to move faster, validate ideas earlier, and create better products.

Through real-world examples, you’ll learn how design engineers operate at the intersection of form and function—building prototypes, establishing design systems, and translating between disciplines.

You’ll learn proven processes for:

• Building collaborative workflows between designers and developers

• Using prototyping to validate ideas and uncover edge cases early

• Structuring design engineering teams for maximum impact

• Avoiding common pitfalls like skill siloing and gatekeeping

• Leading and scaling the discipline within different organizational models

Whether you’re an individual contributor looking to define your career path or a leader aiming to integrate design engineering into your company’s DNA, this handbook provides the tools and insights to unlock faster innovation, stronger teamwork, and better products.

Length: 102 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get the Design Engineering Handbook

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in Design Engineering Handbook

Introducing Design Engineering

Defines the discipline of design engineering, dispelling the “unicorn” myth, and shows how specialists at the intersection of design and engineering create value, improve collaboration, and accelerate innovation through prototyping, systems, and workflows.

The Design Engineering Process

Outlines the core principles of value, usability, feasibility, and business viability, and demonstrates how design engineers apply rapid prototyping, iterative testing, and collaborative workflows to ensure products are both desirable and buildable.

Engineering Collaboration

Explores the cognitive and cultural shifts needed for effective cross-disciplinary work, offering strategies to overcome siloed thinking, align mental models, and build systems that make collaboration visible, repeatable, and scalable.

Design Engineering Organizational Models

Examines centralized, decentralized, and hybrid team structures, evaluating their trade-offs in resourcing, product knowledge, competencies, and career growth, and offering guidance on choosing and evolving the right model for your organization.

Design Engineering Leadership

Provides a playbook for leading and growing design engineering teams—covering hiring, career paths, mentorship, and advocating for the discipline—while aligning with business goals and fostering a culture of collaboration and learning.

A Design Engineering Manifest

Summarizes the philosophy, values, and commitments that underpin successful design engineering, inspiring practitioners and leaders to champion the discipline as a catalyst for better products and stronger teams.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Design Engineering Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the authors

Natalya Shelburne

Natalya Shelburne is a product Design manager of design systems at Data Dog. Formerly, she was a director of Github’s design system, and a senior software engineer at The New York Times. She has a background in art, psychology, and creativity research. Her work bridges design and engineering to foster better collaboration.

Adekunle Oduye

Adekunle Oduye is an independent consultant supporting companies like Grammarly. Formerly, he was a UX engineer at Mailchimp, building design systems for millions of users. A lifelong New Yorker, he’s also a mentor and board member at Code Cooperative, supporting tech education for formerly incarcerated individuals.

Kim Williams

Kim Williams leads design at Atlassian. She previously headed UX at Indeed and design systems at eBay, championing design engineering as a driver of innovation. She’s also lead design at Meta, Instagram and Twitter.

Eddie Lou

Eddie Lou is an independent consultant and formerly a senior UX director at Indeed, where he led the design system and design engineering teams. With prior roles at Apple, Visa, and PayPal, Eddie brings deep experience at the intersection of UX and front-end development.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

Who else is a Design Better subscriber?

You’re in good company as a Design Better subscriber. Designers at inspiring companies rely on Design Better to stay at the top of their game.

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Download the book

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Read more

The Collaboration Handbook is a practical guide to working better together, whether you’re building products, leading teams, or scaling a company. It offers a clear framework for raising your team’s collaborative intelligence through real-world lessons from creative leaders at top organizations like Airbnb, Netflix, Google, Meta, and Nike. Drawing from interviews on the Design Better Podcast, this book explores the habits, mindsets, and tools that drive effective collaboration across disciplines—even in distributed and hybrid environments.

You’ll learn how to lead with empathy, understand your colleagues and customers more deeply, and align around mission, vision, and purpose. Through actionable insights and engaging stories, you’ll discover how companies like Eileen Fisher, VMWare, and Astra use storytelling, principles, and trust-building to fuel innovation. With contributions from guests like Seth Godin, Julie Zhuo, Brian Chesky, John Cleese, and Marty Cagan, this book is essential reading for anyone looking to foster creativity, reduce friction, and build a collaborative culture.

Length: 131 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get the Collaboration Handbook

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in Collaboration Handbook

Raising Your Collaborative Intelligence

This chapter introduces the concept of collaborative intelligence and why it’s essential in today’s distributed work environment. You’ll learn how design thinking and cross-disciplinary inspiration can strengthen team dynamics and drive innovation.

Collaborative Leadership

Great leadership isn’t about authority—it’s about service, storytelling, and shared vision. Learn from leaders at companies like Meta, Nike, Airbnb, and Astra how to lead from behind, build trust, and multiply your team’s impact.

Understanding Your Colleagues

Collaboration starts with empathy. This chapter explores how to build rapport, align goals, and navigate different perspectives to create healthier, more creative team dynamics—drawing insights from leaders at Google, Netflix, and VMWare.

Understanding Your Customers

To build the right product, you need to deeply understand who it’s for. Learn how companies like Airbnb and Google collaborate with customer to avoid product design.

Mission, Vision, and Purpose

Alignment doesn’t happen by accident. Discover how purpose-driven companies like Eileen Fisher and Airbnb use clear mission, vision, and values to guide decision-making, empower teams, and create meaningful work.

Creativity, Innovation, and Divergent Thinking

Creativity is a team sport. This chapter explores how to create the right conditions for innovation through psychological safety, structured tension, and diverse viewpoints—with stories from John Cleese, David Kelley, and Irene Au.

Building Together

Learn how teams at places like IDEO and Google build shared understanding and momentum by co-creating early and often—turning ideas into tangible experiences faster, with less friction.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Collaboration Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the authors

Eli Woolery

Elijah trained in the Product Design program at Stanford University, where he now teaches as a lecturer. He has a background in photography and filmmaking, as well as product and industrial design. He is formerly the Director of Design Education at InVision, a software design and collaboration platform.

After working as a lead design engineer with Light & Motion, a vertically integrated manufacturer of consumer underwater video and photography equipment, he pursued graduate studies in marine biology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and co-founded the print magazine Wetpixel Quarterly in 2007. He was a founder in the second class of Innovation Endeavor's Runway Program, a venture-backed startup accelerator backed by Eric Schmidt's fund.

He also founded Out of the Deep Blue, a design consultancy, where he worked on web and mobile applications for clients like Genentech and Kaiser Permanente. As a life-long worshiper of the ocean, he loves to surf, dive, and kayak.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter is a design and technology leader, and co-host of the Webby-nominated Design Better Podcast. He founded the user experience practice at Mailchimp, helping the company grow from a few thousand users to tens of millions. At InVision, he led research into the inner workings of top design teams at companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Google to uncover what drives their success.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Aarron joined former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden at Resolve to Save Lives, applying design and technology to support emergency response efforts at the WHO, Africa CDC, and U.S. public health departments.

Aarron has advised the White House, the U.S. Department of State, and dozens of leading companies, startups, and venture capital firms.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

Who else is a Design Better subscriber?

You’re in good company as a Design Better subscriber. Designers at inspiring companies rely on Design Better to stay at the top of their game.

Become a Premium subscriber now

Download the book

Download links for this book will unlock below when you subscribe.

Read more

The Design Leadership Handbook is a practical guide for designers stepping into leadership roles, offering a clear roadmap for managing teams, scaling design operations, and shaping product vision. Drawing on real-world insights from design leaders at top companies like Netflix, Airbnb, Slack, Facebook, and Spotify, this book addresses the challenges of transitioning from individual contributor to design leader. Through engaging stories and actionable frameworks, it teaches how to build a high-performing team, manage with empathy, operationalize design processes, and influence across your organization.

Whether you’re leading your first team or scaling design at a growing company, this handbook will help you navigate leadership with confidence. You’ll learn how to hire and coach effectively, give and receive feedback, run design critiques and retrospectives, and partner cross-functionally. With examples from companies like 3M, Twitter, and Mailchimp, this book is a must-read for anyone looking to elevate their impact and build a resilient, visionary design practice.

Length: 73 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get the Design Leadership Handbook

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in Design Leadership Handbook

Becoming a design leader

This chapter explores the transition from designer to leader, showing how to navigate uncertainty, build confidence, and embrace new responsibilities beyond the craft of design.

Building the team

Learn how to hire thoughtfully, define team values, and structure your design org using proven strategies from companies like Airbnb, Facebook, and Mailchimp.

Managing a design team

Get your bearings on coaching, 1-on-1s, conflict resolution, and identifying team members’ strengths to help them thrive.

Operationalizing design

Learn how to establish scalable feedback systems, rituals like design critiques and retrospectives, and tools to help remote and co-located teams stay aligned.

Forging alliances

This chapter highlights the importance of cross-functional collaboration and how building rapport with partners in product, engineering, and beyond can amplify design’s impact.

Shaping design vision

Learn how to define and communicate a compelling design vision that inspires your team and aligns stakeholders across the company.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Design Leadership Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the authors

Eli Woolery

Elijah trained in the Product Design program at Stanford University, where he now teaches as a lecturer. He has a background in photography and filmmaking, as well as product and industrial design. He is formerly the Director of Design Education at InVision, a software design and collaboration platform.

After working as a lead design engineer with Light & Motion, a vertically integrated manufacturer of consumer underwater video and photography equipment, he pursued graduate studies in marine biology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and co-founded the print magazine Wetpixel Quarterly in 2007. He was a founder in the second class of Innovation Endeavor's Runway Program, a venture-backed startup accelerator backed by Eric Schmidt's fund.

He also founded Out of the Deep Blue, a design consultancy, where he worked on web and mobile applications for clients like Genentech and Kaiser Permanente. As a life-long worshiper of the ocean, he loves to surf, dive, and kayak.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter is a design and technology leader, and co-host of the Webby-nominated Design Better Podcast. He founded the user experience practice at Mailchimp, helping the company grow from a few thousand users to tens of millions. At InVision, he led research into the inner workings of top design teams at companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Google to uncover what drives their success.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Aarron joined former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden at Resolve to Save Lives, applying design and technology to support emergency response efforts at the WHO, Africa CDC, and U.S. public health departments.

Aarron has advised the White House, the U.S. Department of State, and dozens of leading companies, startups, and venture capital firms.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

Who else is a Design Better subscriber?

You’re in good company as a Design Better subscriber. Designers at inspiring companies rely on Design Better to stay at the top of their game.

Become a Premium subscriber now

Download the book

Download links for this book will unlock below when you subscribe.

Read more

Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter is a foundational text for anyone seeking to create digital experiences that resonate on a human level. Drawing from psychology, storytelling, and interface design, the book teaches readers how to build trust and delight through emotional design. Walter shows how emotional connection—often overlooked in UX—can be a strategic advantage that drives user engagement and loyalty. You’ll learn practical techniques for using personality, surprise, and visual cues to forge meaningful interactions between users and products, with insights that have been applied at companies like Mailchimp, Zappos, and Apple.

Lauded by design leaders like Jeffrey Zeldman (“This is the book I wish I had written”) and Jason Fried of Basecamp, Designing for Emotion has been called “timeless” and “essential” reading for product teams. In this updated edition, Walter includes fresh examples and expands on how emotional design principles apply across platforms and at scale. Whether you’re designing your first product or evolving a mature system, this book will help you make deeper connections with your users—by making your products feel more human.

Length: 143 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

We’ve seen by now that digital experiences not only delight and empower people, but can also destroy and depress them. Aarron’s reboot addresses these darker concerns while still exhibiting the unfettered optimism he’s brought to the intersection of creative expression and business.

John Maeda, VP Engineering, Head of Computational Design / AI Platform

Get the Designing for Emotion

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

Business leaders everywhere are now appreciating the power of design. But what exactly is that power? This book breaks down what design is really about, and how to go beyond functional and usable to truly delightful. Chock-full of simple yet powerful concepts and relatable examples, this book will have you feeling more inspired and capable of making wonderful things.

Julie Zhuo, Author of The Making of a Manager

Every now and then a book comes along that changes the way you think about the web. This is one of them. The web is made for humans, and Designing for Emotion does a fantastic job explaining how to keep that in mind. Two swissmiss thumbs up!

Tina Roth Eisenberg, Founder of Swissmiss and Creative Mornings

What’s in Designing for Emotion

Emotional design

This chapter introduces the core premise of the book—that emotionally intelligent design can create more memorable, engaging, and effective user experiences—and lays out the business case for why emotion matters in product design.

Designing for humans

Explore how human psychology and behavior shape user expectations, and how designing with empathy for cognitive and emotional needs leads to more intuitive, human-centered products.

Personality

Learn how to craft and apply a unique brand personality that brings warmth, relatability, and distinction to your product, helping it stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Empathy and inclusion

This chapter emphasizes designing for a broad spectrum of users by recognizing bias, practicing inclusive design, and embedding empathy into every stage of the design process.

Emotional engagement

Understand how to evoke emotional responses—like joy, surprise, and delight—through microinteractions, thoughtful details, and storytelling techniques that deepen user connection.

Trust, fear, and forgiveness

Delve into the emotional dynamics of trust and fear in user experience, and learn how to design interfaces that comfort, support, and gracefully recover from failure.

The business of emotional design

Learn how to connect emotional design to business outcomes, showing how emotional resonance drives customer loyalty, advocacy, and long-term product success—and how to advocate for it within your organization.

Emotion can be a fuzzy word, but with Aarron Walter’s expertise and insight, you’ll learn how to turn it into an advantage for your business.

Jake Knapp, New York Times bestselling author of Sprint

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Designing for Emotion, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the author

Aarron Walter is a design and technology leader, and co-host of the Webby-nominated Design Better Podcast. He founded the user experience practice at Mailchimp, helping the company grow from a few thousand users to tens of millions. At InVision, he led research into the inner workings of top design teams at companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Google to uncover what drives their success.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Aarron joined former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden at Resolve to Save Lives, applying design and technology to support emergency response efforts at the WHO, Africa CDC, and U.S. public health departments.

He’s the author of several books, including the second edition of Designing for Emotion, and has advised the White House, the U.S. Department of State, and dozens of leading companies, startups, and venture capital firms.

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The Design Systems Handbook is a practical guide to building and scaling design systems that improve consistency, speed, and collaboration across teams. Written by leading experts in design and engineering from Etsy, Square, Github, Shopify, and Microsoft, it makes the case for moving beyond bespoke design work toward reusable, component-based systems guided by clear standards. Readers will learn how design systems reduce design debt, improve usability, and allow teams to prototype, iterate, and ship faster.

The book features real-world examples from companies like Google (Material Design), Shopify (Polaris), Salesforce (Lightning Design System), and LinkedIn, highlighting different team models and implementation strategies. It also covers key topics like accessibility, documentation, and testing. Whether you’re just starting out or refining an existing system, this book provides clear, actionable guidance for building systems that scale.

Length: 144 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get the Design Systems Handbook

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in Design Systems Handbook

Introducing design systems

Marco Suarez (Etsy) covers why design systems are essential for scaling design, reducing inconsistency, and accelerating product development.

Designing your design system

Jina Anne (Microsoft) explains how to assemble the right team, define your visual language, and structure your system for flexibility and reuse.

Building your design system

Katie Sylor-Miller (Square) shares practical advice on writing modular, accessible, and maintainable code to bring your system to life.

Putting your design system into practice

Diana Mounter (Github) lays out how to integrate your system into daily workflows, drive adoption, and empower teams without limiting creativity.

Expanding your design system

Marco Suarez (Etsy) outlines how to evolve your system over time with governance, tooling, and cross-team collaboration at scale.

The future of design systems

Roy Stanfield (Shopify) explores how design tokens, cross-platform consistency, and emerging tools are shaping the next generation of design systems.

Appendix

A curated list of resources, tools, and further reading to help you dive deeper into the craft and practice of systemized design.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Design Systems Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the authors

Marco Suarez

Marco Suarez has helped shape the visual language, design systems, and customer experiences of companies like Etsy and Mailchimp. His work extends beyond design to influence internal processes that scale across organizations. He is also the co-founder of Methodical Coffee.

Jina Anne

Jina Anne is a leading advocate for design systems, having contributed to the evolution of systems at Amazon, Salesforce, Asana, and Google. Her work has shaped foundational concepts such as design tokens. She is also the co-founder of the Clarity Conference.

Katie Sylor-Miller

Katie Sylor-Miller is Principal Engineer and Web Tech Lead at Square, and was formerly Frontend Architect at Etsy. She specializes in design systems, web performance, accessibility, and frontend infrastructure, and is passionate about the craft of Staff Engineering. As an invited expert on the W3C Web Performance Working Group, she helps guide browser development to improve Web Performance APIs.

Diana Mounter

Diana Mounter is Head of Design at GitHub. Her approach blends systems thinking, inclusive design, and the perspective of code as a material in the design process.

Roy Stanfield

Roy Stanfield has played a pivotal role in developing design systems at Airbnb and Etsy. He currently serves as Principal Product Designer at Shopify.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

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The DesignOps Handbook is a comprehensive guide to operationalizing design at scale, drawing on the firsthand experiences of industry veterans who have built and evolved DesignOps practices at companies like Pinterest, Facebook, Airbnb, and Atlassian. The book explores how organizations can support growing design teams through strategic planning, improved workflows, and effective tooling. Readers will gain insight into how to manage headcount, develop onboarding practices, support cross-functional collaboration, and cultivate a culture of craft and consistency across product teams.

The authors—Kate Battles, Meredith Black, Dave Malouf, and Collin Whitehead—bring deep expertise from roles leading design operations at major tech companies. Their guidance is backed by real-world examples and interviews with design leaders who have successfully implemented DesignOps frameworks. The DesignOps Handbook is an essential resource for anyone seeking to build better design teams and products in complex, fast-moving environments.

Length: 80 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get the DesignOps Handbook

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in the DesignOps Handbook

Introducing DesignOps

Dave Malouf explains how DesignOps keep design aligned with the business and give designers more focus.

DesignOps scenerios and models

Collin Whitehead shares signs it’s time to operationalize and covers models to use when assembling a team.

Putting DesignOps into play

Meredith Black guides you through getting buy-in, starting, staffing, and hiring a DesignOps team.

Team coordination

Kate Battles explores how to socialize DesignOps and establish strong cross-functional partnerships.

ResearchOps

Dave Malouf walks through the people, business, and workflow considerations that make up ResearchOps.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the DesignOps Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get this book plus the entire library

About the authors

Meredith Black

Meredith Black is a Design Operations Consultant working with companies worldwide on implementing DesignOps within their design organizations.

Prior, Meredith spent five years at Pinterest where she started and grew the DesignOps practice into an internationally renowned team while also being instrumental in growing and building the Design team. She is also the co-founder of the international community, DesignOps Assembly.

Kate Battles

Kate Battles leads DesignOps for Fitbit at Google. Previously, she was a program manager for Frog Design. She has more than 15 years experience in the DesignOps space.

Collin Whitehead

Collin Whitehead is the VP of design at Grammarly. Formerly, he was the Director of Central Design at Dropbox. In this role he leads the Design Systems, Content Design, Brand Studio, Design Operations and Brand Marketing groups.

Dave Malouf

Dave Malouf is a distinguished UX Designer in Design Operations, Chief of Staff at Walmart. He is a specialist in Design Operations with over 25 years experience designing and leading in digital services.

Gregg Bernstein

Gregg Bernstein is a user experience research leader and the author of Research Practice: Perspectives from UX researchers in a changing field. He is a staff UX researcher at Medium.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

Who else is a Design Better subscriber?

You’re in good company as a Design Better subscriber. Designers at inspiring companies rely on Design Better to stay at the top of their game.

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Successful design-driven companies building the best products with the strongest design teams have practices in common. These extensively researched core best practices will help your team design better, faster, and more collaboratively. Combined with the power of design thinking, these product design principles with insights from Netflix, Google, Slack, Airbnb, and more will accelerate your team’s design practice.

Length: 168 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats, free for Design Better Premium subscribers

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get Principles of Product Design

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in Principles of Product Design

Guess Less

The software industry celebrates stories of lightning-strike success so much, you’d think hunches and risky bets could create unicorns. The best product design teams understand the reality—customer research forms the bedrock of successful products and companies.

Story First

Humans have used stories to foster collective understanding since the beginning. The most powerful designs start with a story—the why—and where your designs fit into people’s lives. Using product stories, journey maps, storyboards, and user personas, teams can build empathy and understanding before designing.

Pencils Before Pixels

Every design begins somewhere, in imperfection. Sketching brings together designers and key stakeholders so they can collaboratively find the best solutions without getting lost in design details.

Show and Tell

When it comes to feedback, there’s little room for polite reserve within a design team. Use design reviews, retrospectives, design standups, and careful space planning to facilitate a culture of feedback within your team—your designs and designers will benefit.

Fast Feedback

Building great products requires an iterative process. The more your team tests their designs through prototyping, the faster you’ll discover needed course corrections or new possibilities. Through building blocks like pattern libraries and user feedback, teams can always design with fresh eyes.

Lateral Design

Your org chart can greatly influence the design process at your company. Bridge gaps between design, engineering, research, product, and others with cross-functional teams, sprints, working groups, and other structural changes that enable better lateral design.

Break the Black Box

As your company and design org mature and scale, it gets harder to maintain the visibility and transparency crucial for great product design. You’ll need to take on streamlining communication, surfacing design within the company, and more big-picture challenges beyond your desk.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Principles of Product Design, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the author Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter is a design and technology leader, and co-host of the Webby-nominated Design Better Podcast. He founded the user experience practice at Mailchimp, helping the company grow from a few thousand users to tens of millions. At InVision, he led research into the inner workings of top design teams at companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Google to uncover what drives their success.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Aarron joined former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden at Resolve to Save Lives, applying design and technology to support emergency response efforts at the WHO, Africa CDC, and U.S. public health departments.

Aarron has advised the White House, the U.S. Department of State, and dozens of leading companies, startups, and venture capital firms.

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

Who else is a Design Better subscriber?

You’re in good company as a Design Better subscriber. Designers at inspiring companies rely on Design Better to stay at the top of their game.

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Download links for this book will unlock below when you subscribe.

Read more

Few topics are as foundational to the creative process than design thinking. In this book, you’ll learn how to put the thinking-based framework popularized by the Stanford d.school into practice so you can take on challenges in your organization and reach insightful solutions.

Written by Design Better co-host and Stanford product design instructor, Eli Woolery, this book features insights from designers at Google, Uber, Netflix, NASA, Khosla Ventures, and many more.

Length: 102 pages

Available in PDF and epub formats and is free for Design Better Premium subscribers.

Already a Premium subscriber? Download our entire library here.

Get the Design Thinking Handbook

Get this book in PDF and epub formats today by becoming a Premium subscriber. When you subscribe, you’ll also get the entire Design Better library, 2 extra podcast episodes each month (all ad-free), access to monthly AMAs with designers and leaders at Google, IBM, Nike, Pinterest, and so much more. You’re getting more than just a book, you’re getting an education.

Subscribe to get this book

What’s in the Design Thinking Handbook

Why we need design thinking

Learn why design thinking is more than a methodology and how it combines problem-solving with deep empathy.

Empathize

Step back and put yourself in users’ shoes to get closer to insightful, innovative design through empathy.

Define

Read how reframing your point of view based can shift your perspective and transform your final solution.

Ideate

Discover how to go beyond basic brainstorms early in the process to find potential solutions to investigate.

Prototype

Learn why you should challenge assumptions and solve disputes with prototypes before building a product.

Test

Read why observing users’ interactions with your product gives you the most important feedback of all.

Subscribe and get the entire library

When you become a Premium subscriber, not only will you get the Design Thinking Handbook, you’ll also get our entire library of books that cover a range of essential topics and are written by top industry experts.

• Design Leadership Handbook: Take your career further whether you aspire to lead or need to become a better one. This book will give you the foundation you need.

• Design Systems Handbook: Learn to design, deploy, and drive adoption of a design system in your organization with this book written by experts from Github, Salesforce, Pinterest, Etsy, and Shopify.

• Design Thinking Handbook: Informed by the Stanford methodology, this book provides the foundation for innovation and product design exploration.

• Designing for Emotion: Learn how to design products that inspire trust, overcome user fears, and create lasting impressions with this classic that’s inspired teams at The White House, Intuit, Google, and more.

• DesignOps Handbook: Written by DesignOps pioneers, this book is the essential guide to improving your team’s core operations so designers can focus on what they love most—design.

• Principles of Product Design: There is a proven recipe for making great products, and this book lays it all out with real-world examples of the best design teams.

• Collaboration Handbook: Collaboration is a critical capability for designing great products at scale. The Collaboration Handbook shows how teams at inspiring companies like Netflix, Google, and Airbnb build trust, align around purpose, and work across disciplines—and how you can learn to do the same.

• Design Engineering Handbook: This book shows you how to bridge the gap between design and engineering to turn collaboration into a competitive edge. Featuring insights from leaders at The New York Times, Mailchimp, Minted, and Indeed, it shares practical frameworks for prototyping, building design systems, and uniting form and function to create better products faster.

• Animation Handbook: This is the guide to using purposeful motion in digital product design, turning static interfaces into dynamic, meaningful experiences. Written by two-time Apple Design Award winner Ryan McLeod and featuring insights from Google, Slack, Dropbox, and Apple, it shows how to apply principles like timing, easing, and choreography to smooth transitions, reduce cognitive load, and create products that feel alive, responsive, and human.

Get the book and the entire library

About the author Eli Woolery

Elijah trained in the Product Design program at Stanford University, where he now teaches as a lecturer. He has a background in photography and filmmaking, as well as product and industrial design. He is formerly the Director of Design Education at InVision, a software design and collaboration platform.

After working as a lead design engineer with Light & Motion, a vertically integrated manufacturer of consumer underwater video and photography equipment, he pursued graduate studies in marine biology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and co-founded the print magazine Wetpixel Quarterly in 2007. He was a founder in the second class of Innovation Endeavor's Runway Program, a venture-backed startup accelerator backed by Eric Schmidt's fund.

He also founded Out of the Deep Blue, a design consultancy, where he worked on web and mobile applications for clients like Genentech and Kaiser Permanente. As a life-long worshiper of the ocean, he loves to surf, dive, and kayak.

Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

You’ll get so much more when you get this book

Subscribe and you’ll also get:

• 4 Design Better Podcast episodes per month—2 more than with a free account

• Ad-free podcast episodes

• Monthly online AMAs with experts from companies like Google, Nike, Flat Iron Health, IBM, Pinterest, Sequoia Capital, Space X, Headspace, and more. Plus, you’ll get recordings from all past AMAs.

• The Brief, our in-depth newsletter on topics like design systems, the creative process, AI, and more sent every month to help you synthesize what you’re learning from Design Better.

Who else is a Design Better subscriber?

You’re in good company as a Design Better subscriber. Designers at inspiring companies rely on Design Better to stay at the top of their game.

Become a Premium subscriber now

Download the book

Download links for this book will unlock below when you subscribe.

Read more