Just make fonts gray, put as little content on as much screen area as possible, and include some Corporate Memphis around.
Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
111–120 of 127 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#112In the past 2 years I learned to conduct and analyse in-depth interviews in the health-care sector. My goal was 100 interviews. To get a hang of it. I finished my 300th interview recently. For me, as a software developer, there is nothing harder and more valuable than those conversations.
That sounds very interesting - do you have some tips about how you learned this skill and how to do these interviews ?
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#113I am sponsored by my company to complete a UX certificate for my continued learning goal. The beautiful thing about it is since my company is aware of my learning, not only that they support me financially but also positively look for opportunities that I can apply what I learn to real-life projects. That helps me learn and improve my UX mindset significantly over the time. So I would say taking UX courses, reading related articles, books, resources are important but the key tip is searching for projects (personal or professional) to apply what you learn as soon as possible. It should never be too soon or “I don’t think I am ready yet”. You got it.
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#114The Science of Great UI is an amazeballs course. Like knock you on your ass amazing. I could not recommend it enough. Mark Miller is a genius. http://www.sgui.com/
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#115Mu number 1 tip from some 20 years of watching UI design evolve:
Design that is more accessible for users with disabilities is more accessible for everyone.
The first level of this is easy, but few do it.
Step 1: use a desktop PC. Windows or Linux as you prefer, but not a Mac, and not a laptop.
Step 2: unplug the mouse. Learn to do everything with the keyboard. The WWW is a pain but most other things are easy, but you'll need to learn the keystrokes. Few know them these days. Windows is good at this, and you'll quickly discover that most Linux desktops are poor. (For me, Xfce is about the best.)
Spend a week working like this. You will discover a tonne of stuff about UI design you never noticed before.
Step 3: for the most advanced users only. Now you are used to working without a pointing device, install a screenreader -- NVDA for Windows is good and free. Now, unplug your screen. Learn to work with keyboard and sound only.
I am part way through learning this and it's savage, but it's like learning to play chess blindfold. Once you have the patterns in your head, you discover that you don't need to see them and you can still be fast and efficient.
But steps 1 & 2 will put you in the 1% of best UI designers there are in the world today.
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#116Ooh, I’ve been doing nothing but this for 30 years. There’s other good advice in this thread, but my main advice is to pay close attention to people. UX is just applied psychology. If you understand humans well enough then you can create good solutions for them. It’s not surprising — you won’t create a good cat toy if you don’t understand cats. 1. Keep learning how humans use software. This is rooted in our physiolog…
Thanks mate! That is a nice and reflected way of approaching the subject.
Could you maybe provide an Example for your third point? I think this will help the understanding how this could look like.
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#117Firstly, by not calling it "UX".
Okay, enlighten me. What would be correct and why?
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#118My story/Ted-talk on how I a dev learned design: 1. I downloaded photoshop 2. Opened it 3. It was white page 4. I drew a red box 5. Stared at it (was it good? was it bad?) 6. Looked at other sites and tried recreating them 7. Eventually I learned how to use photoshop but I still didn't get what made things look good, I just knew X looked better than Y??? 8. I started to learn graphic design. 9. I learned lot of desig…
Is there a recording of this talk?
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#119study and compile every bit of advice that people hand out and make it easy to retrieve on demand: https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy
Thanks mate, that is a nice compilation in this repo!
Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?
#120Everyone will tell you to read a bunch of books or look at how others use your product.
There is a simple secret to a great UX.
USE YOUR OWN PRODUCT.
Ignore designers, they have no idea what a UX is about. Pretty != Workflow. Workflow is king.
Find something you do all the time that takes 5 steps. Make it 1.
Find something that annoys you? Fix it.
Find something that's slow? Make it fast.
Find something that confuses you? Make it clearer.
That's all you need for a good UX.