Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills?

254 pointsby staticBralmost 3 years ago

Hi HN,as a Software-Developer, I'm looking for resources that could help to raise my understanding of UX design.So a simple question: What helped you increase your UX skills?

66 comments

sonofhansalmost 3 years ago

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 physiology, psychology, and culture. It’s remarkably sticky across different contexts, and it’s learnable. Watch people using software; get them to talk about what they’re doing. You can do this in a lightweight way with coworkers — “Will you show me how you do X?” Then pay close attention and ask questions.2. Prioritize task context and workflow. For the most part, UI design is not nearly as important as workflow. How does a user get from where they are to a solution? Whatever solution you design must meet the user where they are, where they have the problem. So be very sensitive to user context — as you watch people use software, pay attention to where they start, and what expectations they bring with them.3. Document and maintain concrete goals for all design work. Before you design, write down a small list of goals in the user’s own language. “User stories,” we often call these. As you work, keep going back to that list to make sure that you’re staying focused on what users really need, rather than what you think is cool. As you use new software, try to reverse engineer this list of goals — “What were the designers thinking? What did they expect me to do here?”4. Check your ego, and learn to love being wrong. Put unfinished work in front of people. Cheerfully accept all feedback without explaining or defending. Always expect that your design solutions are not good enough, and can only be improved by testing them with real humans. You are not your user; you must position yourself to be surprised by them, and to react well to that surprise.

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mikewarotalmost 3 years ago

It was the days of MS-DOS. I had written a program to manage the inspection of Fire Extinguishers in Fossil Fuel generating stations. The Operations manager pulled a random person in, explained to them that he understood they weren't trained for this, and anything that was wrong was MY fault, not theirs. He gave them a list of things to do, and told me to watch and not say anything.The user got stumped at 1 second into the task... and I blurted out "just press F1 for help"... to which the reply was "How is he supposed to know that?"... and thus began my education of building appropriate user interfaces. F1 was ALWAYS on the screen after that, and I learned lots of things about the differences between someone just trying to get a job done, and my view of computers.

kareemmalmost 3 years ago

Some light theory and heavy practice is the best way to improve. Credentials: been doing UX work for 25 years and I run <a href="https://www.TrialToPaid.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.TrialToPaid.com</a> where I'm well paid to improve UX to grow trial conversion revenue.Here are three steps you can take:1. Read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky, Refactoring UI, and (optionally) The Design of Everyday Things (this will get you paying attention to UX and UI in the real world). The core principal of good UX is Spolsky's maxim: "A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would."2. After reading, go do 10 hallway usability tests on an interface you know well.3. Then redesign the interface using the principles from #1 and run usability tests on that. Later, rinse, repeat.The main idea here is:1. Get some decent grounding2. Learn from where users stumble over an interface3. Try and improve the interface4. Get feedback on your improvements (did they help? what other problems did they cause?)

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ChrisMarshallNYalmost 3 years ago

I consider usability to be a critical component of "UX."I started by reading The Design of Everyday Things. It's a book that changed my life. There was just a thread, hereabouts, about the book[0].I also took a few classes with the company that Don Norman co-owns (NNG)[1]. These are useful, but not a "philosopher's stone." They tend to push user group testing a lot, and I'm not a huge fan of UG testing.I tend to lean on the platform standards, a lot. As I develop Apple software, that's easy. Apple has a very heavy-duty tradition of UI[2]. It's not perfect, but I keep on tossing out my fancy custom UI, in favor of the built-in UI.They did a hell of a lot of work, so I don't have to. I usually regret "taking the road less traveled by."[3]I strongly suggest getting familiar with the built-in UI for whichever platform/industry you are working with. Look at ISO icons[4].Being "unique" is not always a good thing.[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32135115" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32135115</a>[1] <a href="https://www.nngroup.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.nngroup.com</a>[2] <a href="https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/guidelines/overview/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...</a>[3] <a href="https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-traveled-by/" rel="nofollow">https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-travel...</a>[4] <a href="https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search" rel="nofollow">https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search</a>

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donohoealmost 3 years ago

Honestly, I'd work in customer service. I learned so so so much from interacting with real people.Waaaay-back, I got my start ay The New York Times as a customer service rep (2003?) for the website. I walked people through password resets, duplicate crossword subscriptions, cancellations, and even helping them search for articles. Lots of random interactions.It opened my eyes to the ways that UX helps and hinders people, and sends too easily them in the wrong direction.That to me was the best and biggest starting point in UX design; the first-hand perspectives of others, and empathy.The rest can follow after that.

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orthecreedencealmost 3 years ago

> What helped you increase your UX skills?Disclosure: not a professional designer/UX person but have learned a lot over the years.Honestly, building things that were terrible (not on purpose) and going back later and trying to pick apart what I did wrong. User feedback is really important here. Things like "how do I do..." or "where is the button to..." are signals that your UX needs improvement. I think it's useful to be able to look at your work with a critical eye. Of course, if you have the ability, show the things you build to a designer and ask them for honest critique.Put yourself into the shoes of a user and work backwards from there. When I first started doing UI/UX, I put myself in the shoes of a programmer and worked towards the design. This will not ever work. Come at it from the perspective of "if I were to use this app, what are the most useful features and how do I access them?" Work backwards from there and have your UI/UX inform your architecture. Not the other way around.Also, one thing that has helped me is to not get too wrapped up in design trends. It's a distraction from developing a solid foundation. You can have a great UX that people like without having to do the LATEST thing.One last thing: it can be good UX without being beautiful. To me, UX is about discovery: can people figure out how to use it without consulting the manual? If so, it's good UX. The design might be trashy and look 90s but that's less important than having something people are comfortable using.

stayuxalmost 3 years ago

Start with the fundamentals. I have published on my blog introduction series of articles for beginners (don't subscribe, it is not necessary).<a href="https://stayux.substack.com/s/ux-design" rel="nofollow">https://stayux.substack.com/s/ux-design</a>UX is a deep topic. But from software-developer perspective you must cover the basics (if you choose so).My book recommendation list: Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Laws-UX-Psychology-Products-Services/dp/149205531X" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Laws-UX-Psychology-Products-Services/...</a>Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Think-First-No-Nonsense-Successful-Experiences-ebook/dp/B015DC4SCU" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Think-First-No-Nonsense-Successful-Ex...</a>About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design<a href="https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/1118766571/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KZQQL7OYD5DF&keywords=the+essentials+of+interaction+design&qid=1658342653&sprefix=the+essentials+of+interac%2Caps%2C235&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des...</a>I hope this helps, good luck:)

layer8almost 3 years ago

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

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SkyLemonalmost 3 years ago

I usually recommend the following to people I work with:Practice, but also in all aspects of life, UX - User experience, is not limited to only the realm of computer interface.Learn to paper prototype, by hand, no computer, no rulers, it's not meant to look pretty, at lest not at first (graphing paper is recommended).Read Norman's design principles (<a href="https://www.educative.io/answers/what-are-normans-design-principles" rel="nofollow">https://www.educative.io/answers/what-are-normans-design-pri...</a>). Why because they are short and concise, and a good starting point, but not necessarily the be all and end all. (First learn the rules, understand the rules and why they exist, then if needed break them.)Then look at everything in to world, everything at one point had to be designed. Ask yourself what was the reason. Why did something get build they way it did. Read up on general design and look into intent of why something was/is done a certain way.Why are milk and eggs at the back of a store? Why are they together? Look at every door handle, why is it the way it is, what does it communicate? Sidewalks, roads, crossing, traffic lights, color usage, shapes, position orientation. Look at everything around you and work out why it is the way it is.Once you catch yourself doing this subconsciously, look at graphic design, ads, magazines, chose your own adventure books. (Slightly off topic but a good radio series: <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence</a>)In the end keep in mind, that a lot of design is a response to a need, Sometime bad design is needed, bad design forms a presentence, and unless you are willing to retrain every user, you likely have to follow it... think Qwerty keyboards.Good luck!

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hyperman1almost 3 years ago

Give your program to a real user. Ask them to do a task. Shut up, look, and watch 'm squirm. Keep up for an hour. If you start assuming this particular user must be braindead and failed basic logic, repeat with a new real user until the lesson sinks in. Realize your crystal-clear design has in fact plenty of holes, and user will curse your name if you release now. Bang head against wall for therapeutic value (your head, not theirs). Congrats, you're now an UX expert.I did it once. Turned out my understanding of the real core problem was deeply flawed.UPDATE: Maybe interesting to give some details of this. I was developing a program everybody called the calendar. Basically there's a list of people, and they need to have a timeslot each somewhere in the next year. Customer was the people who scheduled these time slots.First version of the calendar app was ... a calendar. Columns monday tuesday wednesday ..., rows with hours and minutes. Drag a person on top of it and presto. You know the drill.Testing with users revealed something was off. No user could really tell what was wrong, it looked exactly as they had asked, but everybody agreed this was not it.Somehow, the better design dawned: Even if they called it a calender, they wanted a task list. Not the date/time aspect but the person aspect was central and required most screen estate. They needed to be able to select the right people in the right order, giving priority to some people but also being sure nobody was forgotten. Date/time selection could generally be automated or needed a simple text field so they could quickly type it in.The redesign took about a day. All the business logic and most of the UI widgets could be recycled. Just had to add a dumb list with checkboxes. Nevertheless, it looked completely different when finished, with widgets moved between pages and resized as their importance grew or shrunk. I kept a calendar widget in there out of some kind of residual guilt, but it was almost completely ignored.

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eternityforestalmost 3 years ago

I try to think UI-first. When I start a project it's not "How do I implement this functionality" it's "How do I make this UI".UX is a lot deeper than where the buttons go, it's about workflow, and architectural decisions can constrain UI. Using a UNIXy suite type model? You might have trouble editing an earlier decision without undoing all work after that, unless you are very careful.Some architectures might make auto discovery and drop boxes hard and users will need to type IP addresses themselves. I'm convinced a top notch UI has to be a goal from the start, or it will take twice the work.Good UX means the actual functionality is designed based on the psychology of the users, not the logic of the task. An undo button is worth more than beautiful code. 2 redundant buttons that do almost the same thing, that could just as well be done by manually entering parameters, is fine if that's what users want and it will save time and stop mistakes.You're not modeling a task, you're modeling how a user does a task.Next up, white space. It really is important. Packing 200k things on screen will annoy everyone. Modern UI design might disappoint some in terms of aesthetics, many people hate the ultraminimal look, but the layout is pretty good and paying attention to how everyone else does it makes sense.When was the last time you needed a manual or google to use an Android app? Almost never for me, because they are self documenting and things just work.

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pramodbiligirialmost 3 years ago

It partly depends on where your skills are at, currently. "Refactoring UI" (the book and their videos) turned out to be a great resource for me when I read it. "Don't Make Me Think" as well.A couple of the recent older threads on this: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29428533" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29428533</a> and <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932020" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932020</a>

jrockwayalmost 3 years ago

This is not great advice, but I try to make sure I only write software that I use. That way if something is painful to me, I know people that didn't write the code have no chance of being able to use it, so it has to change.Certainly, in a software engineer's career, you'll often be asked to make things that are not directly useful to you. Force yourself to use them anyway, or you miss that valuable path of getting feedback -- "do I even like it?" If you made it and you don't like it, it's probably not good.I think this, in general, does yield pretty good results. I think software engineers have much better work tools than other engineers (Emacs is a lot nicer than Solidworks), and that's because you use the tools you make to develop the tools you're making, and get a lot of experience in what it's like to be a user.

dsmmckenalmost 3 years ago

Exposure. Try a lot of software, like everything you can possibly get your hands on to play with. Start with your area of interest, or focus of work, but don't limit yourself to your space. Try as many applications from as broad of fields as you can. Try to find something you like about everything you try. Try to articulate exactly what you like about it. Try to find something you hate about it. How would you improve that thing you hate? Practice thinking critically.You'll start to collect ideas and make connections of interesting interaction patterns. Maybe the way they handle a mini-map in a random GIS software you tried would be perfect for an unrelated music composing app you are trying to build. Maybe you see a great settings config in an a 3d texturing program, or a video game, but it has exactly the range of features you need.

lprovenalmost 3 years ago

Mu number 1 tip from some 20 years of watching UI design evolve:Design that is more accessible for users with disabilities is more accessible for everyone.The first level of this is easy, but few do it.Step 1: use a desktop PC. Windows or Linux as you prefer, but not a Mac, and not a laptop.Step 2: unplug the mouse. Learn to do everything with the keyboard. The WWW is a pain but most other things are easy, but you'll need to learn the keystrokes. Few know them these days. Windows is good at this, and you'll quickly discover that most Linux desktops are poor. (For me, Xfce is about the best.)Spend a week working like this. You will discover a tonne of stuff about UI design you never noticed before.Step 3: for the most advanced users only. Now you are used to working without a pointing device, install a screenreader -- NVDA for Windows is good and free. Now, unplug your screen. Learn to work with keyboard and sound only.I am part way through learning this and it's savage, but it's like learning to play chess blindfold. Once you have the patterns in your head, you discover that you don't need to see them and you can still be fast and efficient.But steps 1 & 2 will put you in the 1% of best UI designers there are in the world today.

tahseen_kakaralmost 3 years ago

I think the best way to increase your user experience skills is to be comfortable using design patterns. By learning how to use them, you will be able to create a consistent experience for your users, which can make a big difference in their overall satisfaction.Another thing that helped me was studying designers who inspire me. Just looking at their work and seeing what they've done gave me ideas for new features and ways of improving my own designs.I also invested in my education by taking classes and seminars about UX design. By doing this, I learned more about industry best practices and how other people were solving problems similar to those I encountered at work.Deciding on your concentration was an important part of my education because it helped me focus on what kind of designer I wanted to become—web UI designer or UX researcher? Once I knew what type of designer I wanted to be, it helped me set goals for myself that would help me achieve my dream career goal (e.g., get hired by Google).Implementing your learning is very important as well because if you don't practice daily then nothing will change! So, after reading articles about UX design patterns and techniques on

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stephencoyneralmost 3 years ago

There’s many things you can do outside of work that others have suggested.In terms of making your UX skills better, try doing some UX work and ensure you have a complete story.Share a crisp problem you’re solving that’s focused in scope. Share an audit of similar experiences that inspired you (they shouldn’t just be competitors). Share insights that you gained from that audit.Then after all of this, share your mock-ups and reinforce them with how and why you landed there.Overtime, you will start to get really good at thinking of parallel experiences that will inspire your work.As a designer, I’ve found all teams to be really receptive to this process (especially eng that can review those audited experiences and agree or disagree with your points).Edit: this should be obvious, but talk to your users as often as you can and always ask why to get to the heart of their points

interleavealmost 3 years ago

In the past 2 years I learned to conduct and analyse in-depth interviews in the health-care sector.My goal was 100 interviews. To get a hang of it. I finished my 300th interview recently.For me, as a software developer, there is nothing harder and more valuable than those conversations.

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windows2020almost 3 years ago

I believe most concepts, like UX, can be broken down into multiple pieces, each of which can be described on a spectrum.On the right side, we may find:<pre><code> * consistency * metaphorical * discoverability * ease of access * attention to detail </code></pre> On the left side, we'd find the opposite.Where to be on the spectrum depends on context. For example, a sales page need not be as concerned with consistency as an application.Being conscious of the existence of these concepts is key. Example: what does '...' mean in many applications? If you don't know, did you subconsciously?And don't forget, design is partially subjective, however, a decision may be objectively inconsistent, un-metaphorical, etc.

tuyenhxalmost 3 years ago

You dont have to read a lot of books about this topic.In my exp, I tried a lot of software, then remember what make me happy when using.Apply these designs in practice. Watch other people using, and improve. Then do the loop.Then if you have time, read books later. Practice make more sense.

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blackRustalmost 3 years ago

Personally, I found this book very useful and straightforward. It is written by the creators of Tailwind CSS.<a href="https://www.refactoringui.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.refactoringui.com</a>

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onion2kalmost 3 years ago

What helped you increase your UX skills?I started caring about users. I decided that I genuinely want them to enjoy using what I build - not in a "hey that's cool" or "ooo that's beautiful" way, but in a "wow, doing that sucky task I have to do every day is a bit less sucky now" way. I put effort in to solving hard problems so I can make users lives a bit easier. It turns out that thinking this way also makes my job more fun.

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6510almost 3 years ago

You look at it again, you again scream inside your head: So, what is the user actually trying to do? Then you hate on your previous solution until you are convinced it is terrible. The only thing it has going for it self is that people are now used to your terrible thing. If you are going to change it it better be dramatically better. You have 100 ideas that should all be considered bad. You prototype a few of them and try to convince yourself you've made it worse. If this fails you try to convince yourself the improvement is not big enough. If this fails you make more prototypes. If you are going to screw with peoples muscle memory you want larger gains out of the mistake.Then you put it live, if enough people hate it you revert it back to the original version. If more people complaint how the new version was actually better you go back to the drawing board.If no one cares however, then you've done a good job.Listen to feedback but don't involve the users outside live testing, they don't have the hate one can project on ones own work. If they could give useful feedback it is something obvious that you convince yourself you should have seen.edit: Dogfooding is good but mind the learning curve. Dogfooding might actually be required to approach perfection.

benaalmost 3 years ago

I'm not a UX developer by trade, but I've had to develop UX in my time so I've picked up some things.It's not about how fast you get to something.You talk to users and they will go on and on and on about "clicks". Anyone talking to you about the number of clicks doesn't understand UI let alone UX. Making everything "one click" away is how you get those massive button interfaces. It's just information overload and even harder to navigate than something that would take more clicks to navigate.Another way to think about this is that a book takes many "clicks" to write. And a book that was written in one "click" wouldn't be good to read. Some long books are quick to read and some short books take forever to read. Flow is way more important than number of actions.Realizing that always shooting for "easier" is a mistake.Things must flow. Except where they shouldn't. Sometimes you want to actually put in resistance. Sometimes you want to make sure that what a user does is actually what they want to do. You want them acting with purpose and intention. If something has a large effect on the system, you want people to not accidentally do that. The best way to do that is to make it slightly involved.

mrcartmenesesalmost 3 years ago

I took a course tonight by Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini from Nielsen Norman group.He’s fantastic. The course was great. I came away with a lot of useful tools and a change in my mindset

cpursleyalmost 3 years ago

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of following Victor Ponamariov:- <a href="https://user-interface.io" rel="nofollow">https://user-interface.io</a>- <a href="https://hundred.user-interface.io" rel="nofollow">https://hundred.user-interface.io</a> <- this is especially good- <a href="https://twitter.com/vponamariov" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/vponamariov</a> <- he often has great threads

carapacealmost 3 years ago

Read "Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface</a><a href="https://archive.org/details/humaneinterfacen00rask" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/humaneinterfacen00rask</a>

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efortisalmost 3 years ago

For business apps, make an effort to become a domain expert and user/operator on their subject and focus on making UIs easy to use, as opposed to easy learn and difficult to use.“…if we were focused on making everything easy to learn, rather than easy to use, we would all be riding tricycles. The bicycle is harder to learn to ride, but much more powerful.”- Douglas Engelbart

zafkaalmost 3 years ago

I think all developers hardware and software should read "Design for Everyday Living" <SP> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...</a>

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bitwizealmost 3 years ago

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.

acarabottalmost 3 years ago

You don’t need to build a product in order to user test. You can take an existing product, watch a totally new user use it for the first time, and learn a huge amount.I suggest doing this for a type of software that you know really well, as you’ll be more surprised by your own assumptions.

will5421almost 3 years ago

Make something, then forget about it until you need to use it. Forgetting is the important part.

Golf101almost 3 years ago

I am sponsored by my company to complete a UX certificate for my continued learning goal. The beautiful thing about it is since my company is aware of my learning, not only that they support me financially but also positively look for opportunities that I can apply what I learn to real-life projects. That helps me learn and improve my UX mindset significantly over the time. So I would say taking UX courses, reading related articles, books, resources are important but the key tip is searching for projects (personal or professional) to apply what you learn as soon as possible. It should never be too soon or “I don’t think I am ready yet”. You got it.

sbf501almost 3 years ago

UX is very much rooted in both industrial design and psychology. I would highly recommend taking design courses in college, it will help hone your eye for how to perceive a task through a given experience.Contrary to popular belief, UX has nothing to do with software: UX is just the sexy new term. It all stems from design, and was studied heavily in the early 20th century onwards. Look at a can-opener, for example, or the classic Jerry-can from WW2. It is about how humans interact with the world through design.

lienhoangduyalmost 3 years ago

There are many ways to improve your UX skills. I've gotten to know UX here for 6 years. I'd start to research all the things about UX, try to learn from the foundation to advance knowledge, I found all the things related to UX on the internet, join the designer community (Facebook, Reddit...) to learn from each other and senior guys. Besides that, UI UX design tool can be very helpful to practice your skills, such as Figma (for pro player), Balsamiq, Miro, Visily (for newbie).

balls187almost 3 years ago

Been taking UX Academy Foundations course from Design Lab.It's already been well worth the cost and effort.<a href="https://designlab.com/" rel="nofollow">https://designlab.com/</a>

maydemiralmost 3 years ago

Some people recommend taking a course or reading books on UX design, but I believe the best way to improve your skills is to get out there and practice. Try designing simple apps or websites, and get feedback from friends or family. Use online resources to learn more about specific UX concepts, and then apply what you've learned to your own designs. With enough practice, you'll start to develop a good sense of what makes a good user experience.

freedombenalmost 3 years ago

The best thing I ever did was just sit and watch people use my software. You can get very deep into theory and psychology, and that stuff is fun and useful, but at the end of the day I got learned more ROI on my time from watching people use my software than anything else I did. Ideally, you're just a fly on the wall, but even if you aren't it's still a useful data source.

zichyalmost 3 years ago

Question yourself every step of the way if you are creating barriers for anyone.To get your started, I recommend this short summary about universal design, inclusive design, and accessibility:<a href="https://sayyeah.com/digital-insights/universal-design-accessibility-inclusive-design/" rel="nofollow">https://sayyeah.com/digital-insights/universal-design-access...</a>

zepolenalmost 3 years ago

Everyone will tell you to read a bunch of books or look at how others use your product.There is a simple secret to a great UX.USE YOUR OWN PRODUCT.Ignore designers, they have no idea what a UX is about. Pretty != Workflow. Workflow is king.Find something you do all the time that takes 5 steps. Make it 1.Find something that annoys you? Fix it.Find something that's slow? Make it fast.Find something that confuses you? Make it clearer.That's all you need for a good UX.

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frozenlettucealmost 3 years ago

I think that using systems with bad UX teaches you a lot on what not to do. I was unlucky/lucky to use Lotus Notes for about 4 years, and that changed my perception on how much suffering software can inflict on its users. If you have a friend/relative that happens to work with it, try interviewing them.

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rad_gruchalskialmost 3 years ago

When I worked for a company selling aircraft spares, I was talking to my users every day. Everyone: from MD, though the call center, all the way to the warehouse.Seeing how they want to work and listening to what issues they had helped me "get into their shoes", thus make the software work the way they wanted it to work.

PointyFluffalmost 3 years ago

Firstly, by not calling it "UX".

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viggityalmost 3 years ago

The Science of Great UI is an amazeballs course. Like knock you on your ass amazing. I could not recommend it enough. Mark Miller is a genius. <a href="http://www.sgui.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sgui.com/</a>

throwaway0asdalmost 3 years ago

I learned CSS working email before and after the release of IE7. IE7 had a completely different box model than IE6 and email is incredibly primitive and unforgiving. Webmail is even worse.I learned JavaScript when I was involuntarily reassigned from a design job to a developer job. I just had to figure it out. I learned to write code in an imperative functional way because I didn’t have prior bad practices and I didn’t want a bunch of vanity decoration.Lately I have been maintaining an OS GUI in the browser. It turned out to be easier and faster without a framework. Less is more when there are many moving parts and competing concerns. What helped me the most with this is good test automation against user events in the browser. I was able to write my own tool to do this and so long as the page was served from localhost I didn’t have to mess with the complexities of CDP.

swyxalmost 3 years ago

study and compile every bit of advice that people hand out and make it easy to retrieve on demand:<a href="https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy</a>

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spaetzleesseralmost 3 years ago

I am not a UX guy but I feel a lot of them could benefit from trying to understand their users and what the tool is actually used for. I feel a lot of them have a “I know better” attitude and don’t respect their users.

vladstudioalmost 3 years ago

Lots of great comments here. I'd like to add something unexpected: story-telling (or, creative writing).An interface is a story. Even better, an interactive story.P.S. I also found that it helps a lot if you read the copy aloud when designing it.

wruzaalmost 3 years ago

In case no one said it yet, take your ui and perform every sensible action path one hundred times. Most of the fancy animations, drawers, pickers and beauty-based designs get old long before you’re halfway there.

game_the0ryalmost 3 years ago

Call me stupid, but I just pick a really good css framework and either try to copy and / or learn from it.Tech companies with great engineers and designers have given away these for free. I try to stand on their shoulders.

jaredltalmost 3 years ago

I loved the book Don’t Make Me Think by Steve KrugSort, simple and insightful.<a href="https://sensible.com/dont-make-me-think/" rel="nofollow">https://sensible.com/dont-make-me-think/</a>

spurgualmost 3 years ago

Simply getting annoyed by websites I've browsed over the years.

labratmattalmost 3 years ago

Tell yourself and others that you're and empath and that you're human-centered. Seek out like minds and converse with them about interfaces. Do it lots - for years.

sbmthakuralmost 3 years ago

The case-studies by Growth.Design have been pretty helpful.<a href="https://growth.design/case-studies" rel="nofollow">https://growth.design/case-studies</a>

devteambravoalmost 3 years ago

Read a lot of sketches from this brilliant woman: <a href="https://uxknowledgebase.com/" rel="nofollow">https://uxknowledgebase.com/</a>

occzalmost 3 years ago

UX is merely the functional side of designing things, and the best resources to help me understand that has been:- The book The Design of Everyday Things - The podcast 99% Invisible

mcjiggerlogalmost 3 years ago

Honestly, like with most skills, practice. Build lots of interfaces and complex interactions and you will get better at it over time.

hoofheartedalmost 3 years ago

<a href="https://tailwindui.com/components" rel="nofollow">https://tailwindui.com/components</a>

z3t4almost 3 years ago

Getting feedback from users... And looking at statistics (what they don't tell you will show up in quantity analysis)

taf2almost 3 years ago

Try explaining how to use your UI to someone over the phone without sharing screens.

jasfialmost 3 years ago

Good tools help a lot, by that I mean frameworks and libraries, e.g. for CSS.

lifeplusplusalmost 3 years ago

My story/Ted-talk on how I a dev learned design:1. I downloaded photoshop2. Opened it3. It was white page4. I drew a red box5. Stared at it (was it good? was it bad?)6. Looked at other sites and tried recreating them7. Eventually I learned how to use photoshop but I still didn't get what made things look good, I just knew X looked better than Y???8. I started to learn graphic design.9. I learned lot of design principles, art functions, colors, reptition, texture, ... yet it still didn't click.10. Gave up but got interested in digital painting timelapse videos, where authors would go over why they are doing what they are doing.11. I had epiphany!! Everything in design should have purpose. Every thing that's visible or not should have a purpose, a feeling, a message. Everything should be intentional. Participated in lots of competitions and overtime honed visual skills.12. Ok now I could design beautiful stuff but what to put again, I can make it pretty but what should be the content. Introducing UX research.13. Turns out you should do some research and gather some details on what you want on the page. Who are you building for, what do they want to see or do, what do you want to show/sell/convey.Summary of few rules:- Elements of design: Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Pattern, Negative Space, Mass, Contrast, Proportion, Proximity, Spacing, Balance, Photography, Positioning, Variety/Richness, Consistency, Movement, Rhythm, Tone Of message, Theme, Typography.. you manipulate these to do rest of things.- Things together are seen as one, things same color are seen as together, and vice versa.- Contrast makes things stand out, contrast can be achieved by altering color, size, spacing, arrows.- Colors give feeling (excited, calm, stability), there are color pairs that go together well. Blue/orange, white/red... There can be pairs of 2,3,4 or 5 colors. Some colors don't go well together ie. blue/red. Cue human biology.- Fonts are either serif or non-serif. No point in memorizing all fonts, just browse good font pairs. Usually different fonts for heading and paragraph makes the contrast easy to achieve. Again different fonts for different purposes like colors: think happy birthday font vs lawyer office logo.- Best navigation patterns are which are common, not new ones.- Anything that is inconsistent should be intentional or it leads to confusion. ie. differing space between buttons, random font sizes, different shades of colors, etc.- Use inspirations liberally and then pick what you feel will work for your project, I use dribbble.- Colors next to each other look different then alone or other colors. Brain automatically fills up few things. Think about optical illusions where one side of box looks brighter or a dress looks like its different color but both are the same color, but due to their proximity to other colors make brain interpret them different.- keep in mind how colors work in nature, there is blue ambient color everywhere even in shadows, sun is at top and that affects how we see shadows and see things with shadows having depth.There is somewhat standardized method to do research, I tried documenting all artifacts that a UX designer working in corporate would produce:-Define Target Segment-User segment matrix (access, value)-Observe/Talk/Analyze Figure out how things are-Find out possible paint points-Experience Map / Journey map-Empathy map-SWOT analysis-Competitive Analysis Features-Stakeholder Mapping-Analyze and Pick Pain Point-WHAT WHO WHERE WHEN-FIVE WHYS-Crazy 8-Affinity Diagramming-Group Critique-Scenario Mapping-Solution Generation-HMW-Storyboarding ideas picked from crazy 8-Solo critique-Group critique-Business Model canvas-Value proposition canvas-Pick Solution-Feasibility vs Impact Chart-User Persona-Solution Creation-Use Cases / User story (as a user..)-Feature Brainstorming-Must/Could/Should/Wont have-User Journey-User Flow-Card sorting-Wireframes-Moodboards-Brief (goals, criteria, spec, etc)-MVP-A/B

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indymikealmost 3 years ago

This: Work, like, love.Build something that works.Then make it likable.After that, go for lovable.

qualudeheartalmost 3 years ago

Coursera has some good courses.

Kalanosalmost 3 years ago

play lots of video games

inshadowsalmost 3 years ago

Just make fonts gray, put as little content on as much screen area as possible, and include some Corporate Memphis around.