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Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#71

Post by stayux »

sonofhans wrote: post #20

Ooh, 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…

A little aside. In early 2000, the problem was how to introduce and educate businesses about UCD and UX design processes. Nowadays, in my personal view, we have to balance all the UX/UI trends/principles/research with business goals more. Starting with well-defined set of product requirements and KPIs and "keeping it in focus" is essential.

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#73

Post by GuB-42 »

layer8 wrote: post #43

In addition to what others have already mentioned, a lot can be learned from the old(!) Windows and OS X user interface design guidelines: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/guide... https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/189487

For me, Windows 7 is the peak in terms of UI/UX. It has been refined over many years, and it was close to perfect, so much that between later versions, nothing changed much. In Windows 7, changes were mostly cosmetic, taking advantage of modern graphics hardware and it was good. So it is certainly a good guide.

Windows 8 broke everything and we still havent recovered. I blame mobile devices, as designers now try to offer a similar experience on mobile and desktop devices, which is a good thing, except it is almost impossible to do well.

I don't know much about the Apple ecosystem, I am sure it is great, but did they survive the mobile apocalypse and managed not to mess things up?

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#74

Post by sonofhans »

adam_ellsworth wrote: post #66
sonofhans wrote: post #20

Ooh, 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…

Great context! Do you have any books you can recommend to become better at thinking/working in these ways?

“The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman is excellent; he originally called it “The Psychology of Everyday Things,” but it kept getting misshelved. “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug is also very good. Neither of these is a specialist’s tome.

“Mental Models” by Indi Young is good, one level deeper, mostly about humans. “About Face” by Alan Cooper is very thorough on the practitioner side, more of a college textbook, with lots of examples and pedagogy.

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#75

Post by bitwize »

Trying ideas out with an expert in the field. Listening to their criticism. When they, or someone else, is confused by the operation of my work, understand that it could be a UI fail and make efforts to make clearer the communication between application and user. Above all else -- practice.

Being a good UI designer is like being a good writer -- your job is to communicate all that your audience needs to know, without overwhelming, confusing, or distracting them. A balance needs to be struck. What, in any given moment, does the user need to know? How do you arrange that information so that it's clear? How do you present the different choices to proceed to the user? It really boils down to, if the user knows at a glance what the situation is and what they can do next, you'll be fine.

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#76

Post by Wistar »

mmcdermott wrote: post #36
sonofhans wrote: post #20

Ooh, 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…

There are days where I would (somewhat tongue in cheek) say that UX is more anthropology than psychology.

At Microsoft, I can recall several UX/UI user studies that were conducted by two anthropologists. Although I don't recall exactly the studies, I know they had to do with future UI/UX concepts.

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#77

Post by niccl »

sonofhans wrote: post #74
adam_ellsworth wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great context! Do you have any books you can recommend to become better at thinking/working in these ways?

“The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman is excellent; he originally called it “The Psychology of Everyday Things,” but it kept getting misshelved. “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug is also very good. Neither of these is a specialist’s tome. “Mental Models” by Indi Young is good, one level deeper, mostly about humans. “About Face” by Alan Cooper is very thorough on the practitioner side, more of a college text…

Also look at Nielsen Norman Group (https://www.nngroup.com). The 'Norman' is the Don Norman who wrote the book, and NNG have a bunch of research that you can look at.

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#79

Post by runarberg »

sonofhans wrote: post #20

Ooh, 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…

These are excellent advises. As a UI/UX developer I have way to often had to fight against a project manager who want a fancy—but ultimately useless—feature (point 2). I have also wrongly fought against a graphic designer because I failed to admit my own shortcomings, wasting everyone's time in the process (point 4).

I would like to add one point though. That it is important to use your own product. The worst UI is a buggy and slow UI. The set of potential bugs is way larger then what you can test for. If you use your own product you are way more likely to spot them, as well as experience first hand where slow response (or slow workflow for that matter [point 2]) is causing users pain.

Another one you should know is sometimes your users are wrong. You should still listen to them, but don’t implement blindly what they are asking for. If a user asks for a feature, ask your self: “Why do they want this feature, what is the problem this feature will solve? And can this problem be solved differently?”

Re: Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

#80

Post by layer8 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #73
layer8 wrote: post #43

In addition to what others have already mentioned, a lot can be learned from the old(!) Windows and OS X user interface design guidelines: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/guide... https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/189487

For me, Windows 7 is the peak in terms of UI/UX. It has been refined over many years, and it was close to perfect, so much that between later versions, nothing changed much. In Windows 7, changes were mostly cosmetic, taking advantage of modern graphics hardware and it was good. So it is certainly a good guide. Windows 8 broke everything and we still havent recovered. I blame mobile devices, as designers now try to o…

> I don't know much about the Apple ecosystem, I am sure it is great, but did they survive the mobile apocalypse and managed not to mess things up?

They didn’t. Flat design, invisible scrollbars, lower contrast, rounded corners, unintelligible monochrome vector icons, and other loss of affordances have found their way into macOS (and iOS of course). But at least the macOS UI does not try to be touch-compatible.

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