
Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design - d_mcgraw
I understand that this wont make me a web Picasso or anything, but I would love to be 'not horrible' when it comes to sites design and UX. What are some good places to look at, get inspiration from, and especially, learn from?
======
mrshoe
My favorite UX books:

The Design of Everyday Things ([http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-
Donald-Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/dp/0465067107/))

The Humane Interface ([http://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-
Designing-...](http://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-Designing-
Interactive/dp/0201379376/))

Contextual Design ([http://www.amazon.com/Contextual-Design-Customer-Centered-
In...](http://www.amazon.com/Contextual-Design-Customer-Centered-Interactive-
Technologies/dp/1558604111/))

~~~
d_mcgraw
I'm reading The Design of Everyday Things right now. It is an amazingly good
book. The examples are awesome. It really is changing the way I look at
everything.

~~~
imwilsonxu
The Design of Everyday Things is cool, indeed. Norman's a great author who
keeps questioning what we take for granted.

However, if you are looking for something more pragmatic, Steve's Don't Make
me Think and JJG's The Elements of User Experience should be the top of your
reading list, especially on web design.

------
joshstaiger
Some previous discussions:

Ask HN: Learning Web Design — <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1604915>

Ask HN: How can I get better at design?
—<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474315>

I’ve found this online book great —
<http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/index.php>

Experienced designers always emphasize learning about typography, and which
seemed unintuitive to me until I began to study it. Bringhurst is a fantastic
place to start there:

[http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-
Brin...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-
Bringhurst/dp/0881792055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286480633&sr=8-1)

~~~
lovskogen
Bringhurst's book is advanced and heavy. It's good. But I'd start with
'Thinking with Type'.

------
mtoader
I want to do the same (not suck at it) so i started to look at web design
communities a while ago. I found some interesting things that helped me be a
little better:

\- <http://webtypography.net/> for typography basics

\- <http://uxmovement.com/> for general user experience advice

\- [http://uxmovement.com/resources/4-best-design-pattern-
librar...](http://uxmovement.com/resources/4-best-design-pattern-libraries)
(inspiration :) )

\- <http://alpha.patterntap.com/collections/Tabs> (found recently about it).

\- [http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/25-classic-
font...](http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/25-classic-fonts-that-
will-last-a-whole-design-career)

Hope it helps.

------
kls
If you want to understand the psychology of design you need to look for books
on "human factors" and not web design books. Human Factors is a scientific
discipline that is a subset of IO psychology.

While many of the books recommended on this board are good books, some of the
authors learned through trial and error without the guidance of the scientific
rigor that is provided by Human Factors, while others are just plain wrong.

The mind works in particular patterns, understanding those patterns will help
you conceive of interfaces and test those conceptions, while verifying that it
does indeed improve whatever metric you are trying to improve, not just
emulate something that worked for someone.

Now I am not saying you need a PHD in Human Factors to design good interfaces,
but a little grounding goes a long way. It will help you understand why
something worked for someone in a book and determine if it will also work for
what you are trying to apply it to.

~~~
BRadmin
Can you recommend any books on "human factors"?

~~~
replicatorblog
This is an excellent book that discusses human factors at a lot of levels from
city planning, to the design of a simple device. It is kind of like a mash up
between "Powers of Ten" and a Malcom Gladwell book. Not web centric, but a
really good read and intro to HFE.

~~~
kareemm
sounds fascinating, but there's no book title in your post!

~~~
kls
He is probably talking about the handbook of human factors and ergonomics. It
has been updated since I purchased it, and is more information systems focused
now. It is like the bible of usability but it is an expensive text, that is
why I did not recommend it.

I guess I should have and put a disclaimer on it. When I bought it, it was
around $275. If you have to buy one book and you can spare the change, this is
the one. But some of the others will get you going faster.

It depends on what you want to do, This book is deeply focused and considered
an academic text, many teach from it. Once the subject matter in this book is
mastered you will be a HF professional for sure, but some of the other books
can get you up and running faster.

At some point you should consider this book for your bookshelf but it is not a
beginners book that is another reason I was hesitant to recommend it.

------
diggum
Check out Smashing Magazine <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/>

Their posts are usually really informative and provide a lot of jumping off
points and design analysis. They have a book out as well that I've only
thumbed through a bit, but looked really well done.

------
GFischer
I like Luke Wroblewski's advice a lot (<http://www.lukew.com/> plus his two
books on form design and web usability)

I have to worry about form design mostly, so two links I liked were

<http://www.uie.com/articles/web_forms/> and
[http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2006/07/label-
placement...](http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2006/07/label-placement-in-
forms.php)

I also stole some ideas from here:
<http://developer.fellowshipone.com/patterns/>

Those are the ones I've read and somewhat followed.

I also bookmarked this framework to try out: <http://gantry-framework.org/>

There are also several eyetracking services (some provided by Ycombinator
companies I believe) - I'd love to have eyetracking studies on the company
website, but the current management doesn't mind that it looks like crap since
it will be outsourced anyways.

~~~
larrywright
"I also stole some ideas from here:
<http://developer.fellowshipone.com/patterns/>

I discovered that a couple of weeks ago. It's really, really well done.

------
atomical
I basically sent the same question in an e-mail to Amy Hoy last night. She
recommended these two books, "The Universal Principles of Design (have to get
a used copy) and About Face 3 for interaction design."

~~~
joshstaiger
Why a used copy of ”Universal Principles”? It’s available on Amazon:
[http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-
Li...](http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-
Lidwell/dp/1592530079)

------
christopherslee
I have to say of all 37Signalers, I enjoy listening to Ryan Singer the most.
He seems to have a genuine interest in teaching and not in a "controversial
for the sake of marketing" kind of way. He has a bunch of videos on Vimeo.

He talks more about user experience and interaction, not graphic design, that
as someone else mentioned, you can find tutorials on the tuts plus network.

~~~
ashitvora
Agree. I sometimes like listening to Jason also.

But yea, Ryan Singer is the awesome.

------
JeffJenkins
It's worth checking out Don Norman's (the author of The Design of Everyday
Things) recommended reading list:

<http://www.jnd.org/recommended_readings.html>

I have yet to choose a book from the list that didn't leave me feeling much
more informed. If you click on a book in the list it jumps to a description of
why he thinks someone should read it.

I desperately want to get the Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics, but
it's just way too expensive:

<http://www.jnd.org/recommended_readings.html#000235>

------
jaimzob
"About Face" by Alan Cooper is far-and-away the best book I've read on
interaction design.

Don Norman's books are also worth a read (though more difficult to immediately
apply to creating software).

For general visual design "The Non-Designers Design Book" by Robin Williams is
an excellent tutorial to teach you how to be, as you say, "not horrible".

------
HeyLaughingBoy
I just started reading Cooper's _About Face_ and by chapter 2 it's already
changing how I think about UI design. Granted, I sucked at it, but still...

------
eagleal
Adding to the others.

You should understand the difference between Web design and UI/UX design: it's
like Monet/van Gogh versus Da Vinci.

In UIs you're crafting like an "engineer", while with general website design
(eg. most of the cases done by graphic designers) you're painting. Either way
practice is required (if you're a programmer you know this, you can't learn
programming only by reading books :).

Also if I may, I would recommend "Semiology of Graphics" by Jacques Bertin,
it's a reference to information design and visualization (if you plan to
design apps, you may want to give it a look).
[http://www.amazon.com/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-
Networks-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-Networks-
Maps/dp/1589482611)

------
systemtrigger
Many YC startups have stunning design e.g. heroku, wufoo. When you come across
a beautiful site, open it in Firebug to see how it was done.

~~~
wushupork
Stunning design doesn't really come from having "beautiful" html code so much
I feel. People who really get design are the ones who think about how a
product is going to be used, who is using it, and in what context. If you are
talking strictly visual design, then the CSS/HTML markup is going to be even
less relevant. For that I would go to CSS sites and galleries and derive
inspiration from there.

~~~
systemtrigger
Oh I agree. We inspect elements of beautiful sites in Firebug to answer the
question "How was that _specific thing_ made?" Obviously Firebug does not find
inspiration for you, it won't teach you the principles of design and it isn't
going to design sites for you.

------
isleyaardvark
"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug is the single best book to start with on
UX. It is short, extremely accessible, and very useful.

------
polyot
1\. Rosenfeld Media has a ranking tool for UX books
<http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/zeitgeist/> and top lists provided by respected
industry professionals.

2\. Whitney Hess, a respected UX professional with great PR skills, has a
recommended list at [http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/Best-Recommended-
Books-...](http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/Best-Recommended-Books-User-
Experience/224)

As a person who once switched to UX design for a while, I can say that they
are definitely great books, though I can't understand everyone' obsession with
Steve Krug (he has EXTREMELY basic books).

Also, Whitney has two popular blog posts of So You Wanna Be a UX Designer
series: [http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2009/06/30/so-you-wanna-be-a-
use...](http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2009/06/30/so-you-wanna-be-a-user-
experience-designer-step-1-resources/) and
[http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2009/11/23/so-you-wanna-be-a-
use...](http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2009/11/23/so-you-wanna-be-a-user-
experience-designer-step-2-guiding-principles/) . They will provide you
basics, but also overwhelm with the huge volume of recommended sources.

3\. konigi.com (ther blog and wiki) is a top source of information about ALL
old and new UX tools, some UX basics and new UX trends. They also sell some
very handy tools for UX designers <http://konigi.com/tools/overview>

------
ashitvora
There's no "The way to design" but there is "A way to design".

I would recommend you "Defensive Design for the Web" by 37 Signals and
"Designing Web Interfaces" by Bill Scott.

These books use examples of Web Interfaces but you can apply them on anything.
Be it a software or hardware.

Also, I would say, when you design something, Dont focus much on visual
appearance. First try to make things clean and ask your non-tech friends to
use it. See what difficulties they face in using your product. You will learn
a lot from these experiences.

------
seltzered
I'm not a UX guy, but I found this to be a good infographic to encapsulate
what UX actually means:

<http://uxbasis.hellogroup.com/>

------
svnv
I like the books "Don't make me think" and "Designing the obvious" for some
basic web UX knowledge. They are short and to the point.

~~~
shadowmatter
These are exactly the two books I was going to recommend. Don't Make Me Think
is like the K&R of web UX books, and Designing the Obvious is like a nice web
2.0 companion for it.

Also, I'd throw in The Design of Everyday Things -- see
[http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/dp/0385267746). It was written long before anyone ever thought of web
usability; instead, it focuses on the usability of things you interact with
daily in real life. Let's just say that you'll never look at teapots or door
handles the same way again...

------
edave
Here's a list of books I've put together for classes:
<http://hci4.me/static/16-475-references.pdf>

MIT's OCW class on UI - [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-
and-comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science/6-831-user-interface-design-and-implementation-fall-2004/)

Also, look at RISD, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, Cornell (in no particular order).

If you can, anything by Doug Engelbart is amazingly motivational (inventor of
the mouse) and insightful.

If you contact me, I'd be happy to send you my slides from lectures I've done
on interaction and answer any questions.

------
lukestevens
tl;dr: Take a course!

Don't know about all these books recs. All good books, but reading books wont
make you a better designer. Reading books about fine art wont make you a
better painter; and reading books about soccer wont make you a better soccer
player. You'll learn the rules, sure, but at the end of the day you need to
develop the skills by training/being coached (if I can run with the metaphor),
so I suggest taking a short course on graphic design fundamentals and learn by
doing.

Getting drilled on the fundamentals will stay with you much longer than
anything you read in a book about ux/design.

------
evandavid
I found it possible to absorb more knowledge (wisdom?) about UX by performing
user tests than by any other method of studying the subject.

Grab a copy of "Rocket Surgery made Easy" by Steve Krug, a copy of Silverback
for Mac, and start doing some user tests.

In time, you will start to see the same patterns coming up over and over
again, and this information will begin to unwittingly inform your thinking
during the design phase.

This isn't going to help you with visual design so much, but it certainly will
help you with the communication aspects of the software/website, and will help
you to avoid design/UX pitfalls.

------
sirwitti
"don´t make me think" by steve krug (is a classic)

if you wanna learn about users, the way they think, and which problems they
have on the web (eg with forms,..) just sit by your girlfriend, your mum or
everybody you can watch in front of a computer.

the best is to watch them using something you created. so you get a clue of
how different problems (than you think) other people have that you might
think.

i was yesterday at a customer showing my progress. so he (a trainer for
wordpress stuff) registered on the site and asked and did some (for me) weird
things.

there´s tons of things to learn from that. :)

------
mikeryan
I steal heavily from some of the best designers/design shops out there.

Here's some of my favs (look through the portfolios)

<http://www.odopod.com> <http://bigspaceship.com> <http://barbariangroup.com/>
<http://codeandtheory.com> <http://akqa.com> <http://rga.com>

------
alexdong
Plenty advices on books and urls have been given but I'd like to shed some
light over practice. There is no book, people or tip will move you forward
faster than design-and-critique.

Design, and art in general, is not very different from coding. You have to
write code to be able to appreciate and learn from other's work. Here is one
good link on how to critique art: <http://bit.ly/d5Ep7p>

------
jashmenn
This is an answer to your request for "good places to look" rather than
learning user interfaces: I've been curating a list of "clean sites I like the
look of" since '06:

<http://www.delicious.com/jashmenn/cleansitesilikethelookof>

------
jwegan
People have posted a lot of resources here, but are there any resources that
talk about how to use specific tools to create webpage designs, rather than
just concepts behind designs? I'm not sure which tools I should even use to go
about creating a design (other than hand coding HTML and CSS)

------
frio
I can't believe a quick Ctrl-F didn't find him already mentioned, but look up
Jakob Nielsen and his ten usability heuristics. If there's one thing doing
some postgrad work in HCI taught me, it's to remember those absolutely.
Always, always evaluate what you're making against them.

------
pmichaud
You know how you tinker with code day after day, and you've been doing it for
years? How you're connected with peers and betters who know how to code also,
and who can critique your work? You know how you think about code even when
you're not coding?

Do that for UX/Design.

------
alt
Check out Joel Spolsky's UI Interface design.
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html>

and as well as mrshoe, I love The design of everyday things.

------
flacon
Want your UX/Web Design to make money? Try Web Design for RIO
([http://www.amazon.com/Web-Design-ROI-Browsers-
Prospects/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Web-Design-ROI-Browsers-
Prospects/dp/0321489829))

------
bkbleikamp
This thread on Quora provides a lot of great advice:
[http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-be-a-good-product-
de...](http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-be-a-good-product-designer)

------
viggity
Ben Fry's Dissertation is awesome, very easy to read and FREE! Ben is the
creator of the Processing language (which is awesome by itself)

<http://benfry.com/phd/>

------
brandontreb
I find <http://psdtuts.com> pretty inspiring. However, their tutorials are
often WAY over my head.

------
jayliew
I recommend 'The Non-Designer's Design Book' by Robin Williams
<http://amzn.to/aMd1kR>

------
omarchowdhury
No mention of Jakob Nielson?

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/>

------
ashitvora
check this out <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1778880>

------
TheSOB88
What I learned from a Human-Computer Interaction class in college

\- Always think of the user. All tradeoffs should be made in favor of the user

\- Don't expect users to read anything; they're busy

\- Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. Don't dumb it down, just
don't complicate it

\- For each page/window, know exactly what the user wants to do there.

\- Make things clear, easy to see, and easy to learn

\- Have an Undo command, for Christ's sakes

~~~
TheSOB88
Forgot \- Feedback. Users need to know when they have performed an action
correctly.

