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Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

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Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

#21

Post by chr15 »

maerek wrote: post #16
chr15 wrote: post #14

I started a weekly newsletter that provides design-related articles and tips: http://seriffed.com Like you, I wanted to improve my design skills, so I coded this up over several weekends.

Chris - can you elaborate a bit more on this newsletter? What sort of content it covers, how you source data, etc.? Just signed up and am interested to learn more. Thanks!

Hey Maerek, thanks for signing up! I try to cover typography, frontend techniques, interviews with designers, industrial design, and branding. It's a broad range of topics that I'm interested in learning more about since I come from a backend coding background.

You can view some past issues here:

http://seriffed.com/issue/6/ http://seriffed.com/issue/5/

If you have any ideas on how I can improve, I would love to hear them.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

#26

Post by nc »

I'm a developer too, for the last year I've been working on my UI & UX skills - and I've somehow managed to get paid to built out product features for the web (UI, UX + code) professionally.

Here's what I figured out (YMMV):

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For UI design

Books aren't that helpful, you have learn by doing.

Instead, for theory Treehouse offers a primer on HTML, CSS & UI design which provided a great foundation, they have courses on things like colour theory. Really really helpful.

Practice. I designed & launched a bunch of complete web apps, each one with a landing page + full functionality. Each attempt had a visible improvement in UI & UX over the last. I got tons of great feedback and encouragement (you're gonna need it) from forrst. So I'd highly encourage posting there and asking for feedback (tell people you're learning).

Learn Photoshop.

Check out Sacha Greif's ebook on UI design http://sachagreif.com/ebook/ it comes with a PSD and has a great intro into UI stuff.

Check out Lighting & Realism In Interface Design by Mike Rundle (developer + designer) here http://designthencode.com

Get a bunch of freebies from dribbble and deconstruct and remix them to your taste.

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For UX

Watch this https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux then watch it again. Ryan Singer is an absolute UX god - he understands how to navigate the problem space very very well.

To really improve UX measure how people use what you make (mixpanel, click tracking) & conduct user studies - watch people use an interface to really understand what works UX wise.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

#27

Post by deafbybeheading »

To me, a turning point in my feelings on UX was reading Alan Cooper's "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" [1]. It's a little anti-engineer (he argues that engineers cannot do this right and you always need dedicated UX people), but he explains core interaction design principles very well.

E.g., he draws a distinction between mere UI design and interaction design: UI design is just layering another abstraction (the interface in question) on the underlying software architecture, whereas interaction design starts with what the user wants to accomplish, and adapts the underlying pieces to enable that.

Note that this is not a UI book, or even really all that much of a UX book, but it does make a great argument for the importance of user interaction.

[1]: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=553473

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

#28

Post by bgnm2000 »

As a professional UX guy, here are my two cents:

Do it : repeat.

If the best chance for practice you have, is on personal projects - so be it.

Find sites for inspiration. Design is ALWAYS changing. Things you're just getting sick of now (chunky buttons, ribbons, page tears etc.) other designers first saw a long time ago - those thing slowly saturate the design community before they're everywhere.

Browse Dribbble.com every day.

When you have to design a site, use sites likes patterntap.com, and uiparade.com to see great examples of slick UIs.

Most importantly, "eat your own dogfood." Use the products you've made, non-stop. Just keep testing and testing. If things feel weird, or unnatural, iterate, and eat more dogfood.

Design should never be something someone gets "right" the first time - its an iterative process of learning user behavior based on what does or does not perform well.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

#29

Post by spion »

Its not that interface design is a weak area for developers. The thing is, we tend to spend very little time thinking about user interface (we like to jump directly to books instead which will do the thinking for us).

I've found you can achieve quite a massive improvement by simply spending a decent amount of time thinking about / working on / testing your UI.

Draw sketches, think about usage patterns, explain how things would work on paper, ask random people to try out your designs after you're finished implementing them, get feedback, identify actual usage patterns and optimize for them. Repeat.

If possible, become a user of the product. It helps a lot.

The second most important thing is to copy other people's good interface designs. Or less harshly put, use existing patterns, especially those widely accepted by users. Check out popular websites and applications, see how they solve your current UI subproblem, copy their solution, perhaps improve upon it. Read about UI patterns and when to use them.

note: We're trained to think that copying is bad, originality is good. In UI, the reverse is true - by copying you save time on user training as users are already familiar with the design. There is nothing shameful about copying other people's good UI design (and I don't mean the visual aspect of it)

Of course, this is not really a substitute for proper training - but quite often its a really good first step which we seem to miss .

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

#30

Post by msutherl »

harrybr wrote: post #17

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that books, articles and conferences are totally insufficient to become a good (UI/UX/User centred/etc) designer. Here's an analogy with physical fitness. If you want to reach "competition level" fitness you don't just watch youtube videos and read books. You have to practice. And if you practice alone, you'll never hit competition level. You need formal TRAINING. You need a…

There's a certain extent to which you can be your own coach. You still need to practice, but you can monitor your own performance if you can train your eye faster than your abilities. Training your eye involves a combination of noticing and analyzing interfaces around you (good & bad), reading texts on design, watching talks, and having conversations with friends and colleagues about design. It's especially important, as a self-teacher, to accept a broad range of influences extending beyond what you might call "UX". That includes, but is not limited to, graphic design, psychology, object design, information design, information architecture, HCI, and fine art.

But, if you can find a mentor, that is always the best way.

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