How to get better at UI design

by Anders Toxboe on December 3, 2009

In the quest of becoming a good UI designer, you can come a long way by reading books, attending conferences, formally educating yourself, trying out tutorials, or just experimenting on your own. However, if you want to go into hyper-speed in bettering your UI design skills, the best way to learn is to work with other designers. Find them at your workplace, hire them, or spend time online in the User Experience- or Interaction-Designer world.

For learning on your own, I have collected a list of various resources that will help you on your way to becoming a good designer. However, before you start, choose your specialty: don’t try to learn everything. Choose your desired skills and branch out from there.

Here we go:

Fundamental design concepts

Learn the basic principles: The gestalt laws, Fitt’s law, about affordance, feedback, etc. The book Universal Principles of Design gives a great introduction to these and much more (100 principles total).

Books to read

Sketching

Sketching is great for trying out ideas fast and receive rapid feedback. It provides a great tool for discussing ideas and exploring different possibilities. Paper prototyping is fast, cheap, and effective: much faster than coding a digital prototype.

Before you buy any books on the subject, check out these UI-pattern.com blog posts on the subject: Drawing corners and boxes, Drop Shadow, Use a thick pen, Get your arm off the paper, Constrain yourself.

Books to read

Usability testing

Discount testing is cheap and easy. The most common approach is the Thinking aloud approach. It will help you quickly test if other people than yourself understand your abstractions. Sometimes it is enough to just grab anybody you can find, give them some tasks to do, and see how well they perform. This will rid most obvious errors that you did not see yourself.

The more advanced lab-based user testing is a science in itself. It will help you once you have removed the obvious errors from your design and is ready to move into the more psychological and engaging factors of usability.

Books to read

User research

One thing is to test whether what you have designed actually works – another thing is getting to the point where you have something to test.

User research is about understanding and engaging in your users. Understanding in what scenarios/situations your users interact with your product, how they interact with your product, and what motivates them to do so.

User research is most often formalized in personas and scenarios, and use-cases.

Books to read

Information architecture

Information architecture is about designing how your design works and how its parts play together. The information architect creates structure and principles to make something work in a clear and consistent way.

Books to read

Interaction design

Interaction design is about… well designing interactions. It’s about designing the connection between your software interface and how it is to be used by the user.

Books to read

UI pattern libraries

UI pattern libraries showcase recurring solutions that solve common problems. They are a great way to study how others have solved the same problems that you are dealing with yourself – and in a way that has become a standard.

Websites

Web design weblogs

There are many out there with great content that will help you learn about both user experience, interaction, business concepts in web design, graphical design, and more. The following list is a very selection of all the great websites out there:

Websites

Conferences

There are many out there. Here’s a few:

Conferences to attend

More?

Please do contribute in the comments with your suggestions.

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How to get better at UI design has 15 comments

  • 3 months ago Non Chexsystems Banks 4 Dec 2009

    I am currently reading Paper prototyping by Carolyn Snyder. It explains the procedures in a step-by-step way. There is no doubt, this books is too good.

  • 3 months ago Jason Robb 4 Dec 2009

    For a post titled “How to get better at UI design” I would expect some stressing of design criticism. Education is the road, but criticism drives improvement. You can only go so far as your education will allow you. If you’re well read, you can travel far. But without criticism, you’re still lacking the practical experience to get better at UI design.

    But you’ve done an excellent job of covering the foundation of becoming better at design. Well done. Should have titled it “UI design education” getting better (as in, producing better designs) requires critique and experience.

    Thanks for sharing! =)

    Jason R.

  • 3 months ago Anders Toxboe 4 Dec 2009

    @Jason Robb I totally agree about the criticism part. It’s a good point.

    That is why I start out the article saying that the number one thing that will help you learn is to work with other people. Both because you can learn from their skills, but also because you have that daily interaction and feedback about the work you produce (criticism is one of the forms of feedbacks you’ll receive).

  • 3 months ago Pete from pumppi 17 Dec 2009

    Hi Anders!

    Thanks for your great article!

    I am doing my final thesis on polytechnic and this site has been good resource for my thesis, as toxboe.net was good resource for tricks back in the days =)

    Thanks

    -Pete

  • 2 months ago Invitro Fertilisation 6 Jan 2010

    These are fantastic tips for creating better UI (User Interface) designs, this article will definitely help many web designers and architects come up with innovative designs.

  • 2 months ago Used Car Dealers 11 Jan 2010

    These are very vital tips and will be very helpful for many working professionals especially the web designers. :)

  • 2 months ago Magga Dora 11 Jan 2010

    Last but not least tip to include: There is nothing that improves design skills as designing. So design, every day. :)

    Design at work. Go home and find little design problems in your everyday life and solve them. Have fun with it and experiment.

  • 2 months ago Himanshu Mody 12 Jan 2010

    I think paper prototyping is thing of past with tools like Balsamiq. You can create mock-ups far quickly and get going with next steps. Although the principles remain the same , one need not literally use paper.

    You have not mentioned anything about technology, I have experienced similar thoughts from Sr.Usability experts that it is not important which technology one is going to use to deliver the product.

    Few years ago it might have been right thing to do , but now with endless possibilities with latest tools , existing practitioners need to come out of this constraint based approach to UI.
    Can I know your views on this ?

  • 29 days ago Anders Toxboe 15 Feb 2010

    @Himanshu Mody:

    I do not believe that there is anything that can replace paper prototyping. I at least have not found any software program that can let me sketch and design as fast as I can with a pen and paper. The other good thing about paper is that I can hang it on the wall and receive feedback from co-workers as they walk by. I can explain a design concept as I draw it – this is so much harder when you all have to look at a screen.

    Technology is for me irrelevant in this case. Design on this abstract level does not have much to do with whether you choose .net or rails as a platform to build your software.

  • 15 days ago SMiGL 2 Mar 2010

    Helpful tips. Thanks

  • 12 days ago TheAL 4 Mar 2010

    Lotta books to read. I’mma have to add these to the “semi-distant future list” unfortunately. A human can only read so much at a time. And I’m neck-deep in Drupal, HTML5 and CSS3 books right now. Some PHP and MySQL too. Plus online tutorials and trying to learn After Effects and Cinema 4D. I’m, well, booked. LMAO

  • 12 days ago Tidy Design 4 Mar 2010

    I find that when you work 24/7 on a computer it is very relaxing putting pen to paper… As much as I love computers, the web, CSS etc I find sketching ideas play a massive part in web design! Nice read guys! :D

  • 12 days ago Thomas Craig Consulting 4 Mar 2010

    I think it takes a lot of trial and error, along with feedback both positive and negative to find the perfect balance in UI design.

  • 12 days ago Troy 5 Mar 2010

    I highly recommend Indi Young’s Mental Modeling (Rosenfeld) to understand and, yes, model user desires and behavior. Very clear and hands-on. Rosenfeld’s other UX books are also fantastic…check them out at rosenfeldmedia.com.

  • 7 days ago UI Design 10 Mar 2010

    that’s really a fantastic post ! added to my favourite blogs list.. I have been reading your blog last couple of weeks and enjoy every bit. Thanks.

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