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
- The Design of Everyday things by Donald Norman
- Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald Norman
- Universal Principles of Design by Lidwell, Holden, and Butler
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
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
- Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton
- Paper prototyping by Carolyn Snyder
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
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Handbook of Usability Testing
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
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper (On personas)
- The Persona Lifecycle by John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin
- About face by Cooper, Reinmann, and Cronin
- Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky
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
- About face by Cooper,
- Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction by Sharp, Rogers, and Preece
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
- UI-patterns.com by Anders Toxboe
- Yahoo! Design Pattern Library by Yahoo!
- Welie by Martijn van Welie
- UI Pattern factory by Janne Lammi
- Designing Web Interfaces
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
- Boxes and arrows
- UX mag
- Signal vs noise – company blog of 37signals
- UX matters
- Smashing magazine
- A list apart
- Bokardo by Joshua Porter
- Creating passionate users by Kathy Sierra – it’s dead, but has got so much valuable information
Conferences
There are many out there. Here’s a few:
Conferences to attend
- Information Architecture Summit
- South by Southwest
- Carsonified events – FOWA, FOWD, etc.
- UX London
- Web App Summit
- Web 2.0 Summit
- dConstruct
More?
Please do contribute in the comments with your suggestions.
toxboe
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
Used Car Dealers
11 Jan, 2010
These are very vital tips and will be very helpful for many working professionals especially the web designers. :)
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.
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 ?
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.
SMiGL
2 Mar, 2010
Helpful tips. Thanks
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Tom Zahler
16 Jun, 2010
Personally I feel that my skills as a UI designer benefited most from performing usability tests and redesigning applications many, many times.
I’d also recommend working together with senior user experience engineers, who are able to direct your efforts in the right direction.
And test and redesign and test and redesign, … :)
aj1s
2 Jul, 2010
It would be great if you could link back to us as well to let people know about this new website :-)
Derek
24 Jul, 2010
I agree with Tom Zahler. Test, retest, test again, have someone else test, beta-test, then test again. Release, then incorporate feedback…it’s never done.
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25 Aug, 2010
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