Ask HN: Good resources for programmers to learn about UX/design?

40 points by cejast 3 years ago | 16 comments

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 3 years ago |

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.

soulofmischief 3 years ago | |

Is this book the reason I see such bad UX trends across the web?

In many of the visual examples, the recommended approach looks worse than the criticized approach, and in some cases is much less parsable. A phrase like "Use more whitespace" isn't some simple-yet-woke millennial web mantra, it's just crappy advice, too vague to be useful and vague enough to be harmful.

Truly, some of these examples are the antithesis to good design. The chapters of the book seem highly opinionated and forcing a particular set of (unvalidated) opinions upon me instead of generalized, objectively applicable tools.

ljoshua 3 years ago | | |

Agreed that it is quite opinionated, and shouldn't be taken for gospel. But I think it's a very good resource for those that are coming from no design background at all and need some strong principles to guide them at the beginning.

Many an engineer-designed page or screen would have benefited from some of the basic principles here, including "use more whitespace."

dhzhzjsbevs 3 years ago | | |

I love that the first example suggesting fewer borders looks worse and more confusing than the one they're suggesting not to use.

akprasad 3 years ago | | |

Do you have a resource you recommend instead?

SebastianKra 3 years ago | |

+1 for Refactoring Design. The designs it presents are okay. But it highlights many of the considerations and techniques you can use to find your style.

Also, as a rule, don't listen to HN for design opinions. Many people here talk about design like a bad programmer talks about principles: "Always have 100% unit test coverage" or "Functions should never be longer than 7 lines".

My recent favorite was when an article introduced an unusual, award-winning checkbox design for a very specific use-case, and a number of comments completely missed the context [1].

^[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31783841

zo1 3 years ago | |

Is it just me, or does the first example in that link, the contact search + list form, look much better in the way that the book says is the "Wrong way"?

Adrig 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago |

I enjoyed Gwern's "Design of this website" https://www.gwern.net/Design

oumua_don17 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago |

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.