Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#1

Post by d_mcgraw » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 4:29 PM UTC

I understand that this wont make me a web Picasso or anything, but I would love to be 'not horrible' when it comes to sites design and UX. What are some good places to look at, get inspiration from, and especially, learn from?

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#2

Post by diggum » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 4:44 PM UTC

Check out Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Their posts are usually really informative and provide a lot of jumping off points and design analysis. They have a book out as well that I've only thumbed through a bit, but looked really well done.

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#3

Post by mtoader » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 4:49 PM UTC

I want to do the same (not suck at it) so i started to look at web design communities a while ago. I found some interesting things that helped me be a little better:

- http://webtypography.net/ for typography basics

- http://uxmovement.com/ for general user experience advice

- http://uxmovement.com/resources/4-best-design-pattern-librar... (inspiration :) )

- http://alpha.patterntap.com/collections/Tabs (found recently about it).

- http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/25-classic-font...

Hope it helps.

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#4

Post by brandontreb » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:13 PM UTC

I find http://psdtuts.com pretty inspiring. However, their tutorials are often WAY over my head.

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#5

Post by seltzered » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:17 PM UTC

I'm not a UX guy, but I found this to be a good infographic to encapsulate what UX actually means:

http://uxbasis.hellogroup.com/

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#6

Post by systemtrigger » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:34 PM UTC

Many YC startups have stunning design e.g. heroku, wufoo. When you come across a beautiful site, open it in Firebug to see how it was done.

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#7

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:37 PM UTC

I just started reading Cooper's About Face and by chapter 2 it's already changing how I think about UI design. Granted, I sucked at it, but still...

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#8

Post by ashitvora » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:37 PM UTC

There's no "The way to design" but there is "A way to design".

I would recommend you "Defensive Design for the Web" by 37 Signals and "Designing Web Interfaces" by Bill Scott.

These books use examples of Web Interfaces but you can apply them on anything. Be it a software or hardware.

Also, I would say, when you design something, Dont focus much on visual appearance. First try to make things clean and ask your non-tech friends to use it. See what difficulties they face in using your product. You will learn a lot from these experiences.

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#9

Post by GFischer » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:46 PM UTC

I like Luke Wroblewski's advice a lot (http://www.lukew.com/ plus his two books on form design and web usability)

I have to worry about form design mostly, so two links I liked were

http://www.uie.com/articles/web_forms/ and http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2006/07/label-placement...

I also stole some ideas from here: http://developer.fellowshipone.com/patterns/

Those are the ones I've read and somewhat followed.

I also bookmarked this framework to try out: http://gantry-framework.org/

There are also several eyetracking services (some provided by Ycombinator companies I believe) - I'd love to have eyetracking studies on the company website, but the current management doesn't mind that it looks like crap since it will be outsourced anyways.

Re: Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design

#10

Post by kls » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:50 PM UTC

If you want to understand the psychology of design you need to look for books on "human factors" and not web design books. Human Factors is a scientific discipline that is a subset of IO psychology.

While many of the books recommended on this board are good books, some of the authors learned through trial and error without the guidance of the scientific rigor that is provided by Human Factors, while others are just plain wrong.

The mind works in particular patterns, understanding those patterns will help you conceive of interfaces and test those conceptions, while verifying that it does indeed improve whatever metric you are trying to improve, not just emulate something that worked for someone.

Now I am not saying you need a PHD in Human Factors to design good interfaces, but a little grounding goes a long way. It will help you understand why something worked for someone in a book and determine if it will also work for what you are trying to apply it to.