[sgdesign]

Agreed. These are great books, but "design for hackers" implies that these book will help you "hack" design, which they won't.

These books will help you get a better understanding of the principles of good design at root level, but they won't do much if you're just looking to make your app look or work better.

On the other hand, these books are much more practical:

http://bootstrappingdesign.com/

http://designforhackers.com/

http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/

And I also wrote a design eBook myself (not as good as the three above, but it's also a lot cheaper):

http://sachagreif.com/ebook

[discovr]

agreed. sacha's books above are really practical and go the next level.

[monsterix]

Absolutely. I just finished reading Jarrod' Bootstrapping Design and it certainly is a great book to consider for web design.