I'm a developer and writing code comes naturally to me. However, I feel that user interface design is a weak area for me and I want to improve. All my UI development is web based, HTML, CSS, and JS. Can you recommend any books or other resources that helped you improve you UI skills?
Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#2Here's my UX bookmarks dump for reads/blogs to get started:
http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1 http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/ http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/
As far as UI goes, spend a lot of time on design sites such as dribbble and try to identify patterns and discover the purpose of them on your own. UI design becomes more engrained when you discover trends (and their purposes) rather than simply reading about them imo.
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#3Take a look at http://ux.stackexchange.com/ - a place to ask/answer/discuss UX questions.
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#4Give this site a try: http://www.siteownernews.com/website-usability/
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#5I've been finding that just simply mocking up the sites/apps I'm building or even just pieces of their functionality has helped me refine what I feel is implementation of good user experience. The marker comes down to "Would I use that?", and more often than not, as fast as I can get a page up it's no match for a mockup that comes to fruition even quicker. Check out Balsamiq (http://www.balsamiq.com/) for the app that I choose to use. I also lurk ux.stackexchange.com, as mtrn suggested it's a great resource.
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#6shameless self promotion - On our company blog you can find lots of articles which can improve your UX/UI skills:
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#7I use sites like patterntap for transpiration.
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#8There are a ton of good blogs, articles and collections out there, this quora post covers some good ones:
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-influential-UX-design...
Also, create a bookmarks folder (or even just a regular folder on your Desktop) just for collecting UX/UI designs that jump out or appeal to you. Either bookmark them, or take a screenshot, and use good, descriptive tags (e.g "Search Results", "Dashboard", etc). Then block out a small amount of time each week(I usually spend like a half hour or so over Sunday morning coffee) to review them; ask yourself why you like the designs/patterns, what appeals to you, why its effective, how could it be more effective etc. You'll start to recognize patterns and develop a sharper eye for effective UX/UI design throughout the web.
Finally, accept and embrace the idea that good UX/UI design is very much an iterative process, it's OK (and actually pretty common) to not get it perfect the first time around.
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#9Check out http://dribbble.com/ for inspiration on graphic design.
Widely adopted UI Patterns for solving UX Problems: http://ui-patterns.com/patterns
search on slideshare for UX / Usability presentations for Devs
Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?
#10I think it is important to distinguish UX from UI design. UI Design is a facet of UX, but actual user experience design delves deeper and is multi-faceted.
This diagram[1] shows the facets of UX exceptionally well. In the same vein, this article[2] defines UX accurately.
[1] http://uxdesign.com/assets/Elements-of-User-Experience.pdf