HACKER Q&A
📣 cejast

Good resources for programmers to learn about UX/design?


Whenever I need to build a UI/interface for a side-project, I always feel frustrated that I cannot create anything that looks or feels good to use.

What are your favourite resources to learn about UX/design? Doesn't have to be web-related.

  👤 ljoshua Accepted Answer ✓
Refactoring UI (https://www.refactoringui.com) is a fantastic resource, and we’ll worth the price in my opinion. I refer to it again and again. You can also find videos on YouTube of the author doing “live” UI redesigns/refactorings, and those are also very useful.
👤 Adrig
My go-to resource is the NN Group (https://www.nngroup.com/). One of the most serious publication that tries to back up insights with actual data.

Then there are the publications from people in the industry that can be interesting, but that's case by case. You'll have better results for specific problems like building and maintaining a design system.

You also have the UX collective (http://uxdesign.cc/) but their articles are hit or miss. Good ones at least provide references for you to explore deeper.

👤 QuadmasterXLII
I enjoyed Gwern's "Design of this website" https://www.gwern.net/Design
👤 oumua_don17
These are expensive but fantastic more than worth the cost courses. [1] [2]

[1] https://learnui.design/

[2] https://learnui.design/courses/learn-ux-design.html

👤 Leftium
Making UX that feels good to use: https://www.udemy.com/course/ultimate-guide-to-ux/

Making UI that looks good (at least decent): https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.2/examples/

👤 dccoolgai
First: UX is not visual design and visual design is not UX. Industry tends to blur them ("oh this person does Photoshop so we'll make them in charge of UX"). If you want to learn design, I'm less sure of what to recommend outside of "read a lot about Dieter Rams".

For UX, read Nielsen Norman and Dr. Weinschenks book "100 things every designer needs to know about humans".

👤 lioeters
Design Systems Repo - A frequently updated collection of Design System examples, articles, tools and talks

https://designsystemsrepo.com/

Awesome Design Systems

https://github.com/alexpate/awesome-design-systems

👤 dhzhzjsbevs
For usability, "don't make me think" is gospel.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usabilit...

For design itself I'm just not that way inclined and use existing frameworks instead.

👤 kristiandupont
Adam and Steve (of TailwindCSS fame) have some valuable resources. I have purchased both TailwindUI and Refactoring UI: https://www.refactoringui.com/, both of which I can highly recommend besides from their many free youtube videos.