
Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills? - pgambling
I'm a developer and writing code comes naturally to me. However, I feel that user interface design is a weak area for me and I want to improve. All my UI development is web based, HTML, CSS, and JS. Can you recommend any books or other resources that helped you improve you UI skills?
======
nc
I'm a developer too, for the last year I've been working on my UI & UX skills
- and I've somehow managed to get paid to built out product features for the
web (UI, UX + code) professionally.

Here's what I figured out (YMMV):

\---

For UI design

Books aren't that helpful, you have learn by doing.

Instead, for theory Treehouse offers a primer on HTML, CSS & UI design which
provided a great foundation, they have courses on things like colour theory.
Really really helpful.

Practice. I designed & launched a bunch of complete web apps, each one with a
landing page + full functionality. Each attempt had a visible improvement in
UI & UX over the last. I got tons of great feedback and encouragement (you're
gonna need it) from forrst. So I'd highly encourage posting there and asking
for feedback (tell people you're learning).

Learn Photoshop.

Check out Sacha Greif's ebook on UI design <http://sachagreif.com/ebook/> it
comes with a PSD and has a great intro into UI stuff.

Check out Lighting & Realism In Interface Design by Mike Rundle (developer +
designer) here <http://designthencode.com>

Get a bunch of freebies from dribbble and deconstruct and remix them to your
taste.

\-----

For UX

Watch this <https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux> then watch it again.
Ryan Singer is an absolute UX god - he understands how to navigate the problem
space very very well.

To really improve UX measure how people use what you make (mixpanel, click
tracking) & conduct user studies - watch people use an interface to really
understand what works UX wise.

~~~
kenshiro_o
Developer as well here - mainly server side Java and Node.js on my spare time.

I started looking into useful material to help improve my non-design skills,
because well... they are non-existent.

I started with Twitter Bootstrap but I don't think it is the way forward if
you want to learn design the proper way. I recently bought this book: The Non-
Designer's Design Book ([http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-The-
Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-The-
Edition/dp/0321534042/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343763260&sr=8-1&keywords=the+non+designers+design+book))
and would warmly recommend it to anyone who wants to put one foot or their
whole body into the design world.

I now try to spend more time analyzing the design of websites, brochures,
menus, etc. It is very fun and I believe it is my observing and analyzing
other peoples' work (mistakes included), then practising, that you can improve
your eye(s) for design.

------
PaulHoule
As you can in other fields, you can learn a lot by studying what the leaders
do, understanding it, and imitating it.

You've got to get away from people who say "We can't do it the way Google or
Amazon does it because they're big and they can afford it." You've got to
think instead "Google and Amazon are big because they did things right."

You've still got to think about (small) scale though.

Back around 2000 I was interested in user management and authentication and
back then the main challenge across the industry was conversion rate, and it
was very good to imitate what Yahoo did.

A few years later, Yahoo's signup and login process had become quite
complicated because they had a notoriously foolish user base that was
vulnerable to fraud and phishing. If you imitated them you'd quadruple your
development costs, kill your conversion rate, and get your email box flooded
from people who forgot their passwords.

(Funny, Yahoo started to go downhill around they time they did this!)

So look at the leaders and think about what they do critically. Don't listen
to voices that say "we can't afford it" -- you can't afford to have employees
that are lazy like that or for that matter, to be working for a project
manager who won't do what it takes for your projects to succeed.

------
harrybr
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that books, articles and
conferences are totally insufficient to become a good (UI/UX/User centred/etc)
designer.

Here's an analogy with physical fitness. If you want to reach "competition
level" fitness you don't just watch youtube videos and read books. You have to
practice. And if you practice alone, you'll never hit competition level. You
need formal TRAINING. You need an experienced professional giving you advice,
critiquing your performance and stretching your abilities. You need them to
help you track your own performance, to become acutely aware of your
weaknesses and focus on them relentlessly.

A lot of organisations don't get this. A few books, a conference and a spot of
mentoring doesn't turn a team of front end developers into UX designers.

~~~
msutherl
There's a certain extent to which you can be your own coach. You still need to
practice, but you can monitor your own performance if you can train your eye
faster than your abilities. Training your eye involves a combination of
noticing and analyzing interfaces around you (good & bad), reading texts on
design, watching talks, and having conversations with friends and colleagues
about design. It's especially important, as a self-teacher, to accept a broad
range of influences extending beyond what you might call "UX". That includes,
but is not limited to, graphic design, psychology, object design, information
design, information architecture, HCI, and fine art.

But, if you can find a mentor, that is always the best way.

~~~
simba-hiiipower
agreed; there are some things you just can't learn without proper training,
but if it’s something fairly straight-forward, you can get pretty far in
studying common practices and trying things out yourself.

there’s a huge wealth of knowledge out there in just looking around you. my
approach (not a pro at all) when designing anything really is just to look for
cues from others. there are a lot of resource-rich players that have invested
a lot in UI/UX design, and, the great thing here, is that much of the pay-off
from those investments is freely available; just look at their products.

this is especially true on the web where it’s so easy to find and compare
sites or apps related to what you’re doing. if you take the time to examine
them closely and look for commonalities, you’ll generally find many of the
more successful sites share a lot in common when you get down to fundamentals
(though they may look and ‘feel’ very different). the ‘artistic’ aspect of
UI/UX gets the majority of attention (and, in my opinion, is the hard part to
master), but what makes or breaks a design is usability, and that you can
learn fairly easily.

at the very least you end-up with a product that works; and this is the most
important element in UI/UX. from there you can learn to perfect it and make it
look amazing, but that takes time and experience.

~~~
msutherl
99% of UI/UX design is people copying each other. The remaining 1% advance the
narrative. Becoming great at UI/UX means becoming the 1%, but there's no shame
in just being good.

~~~
sopooneo
Great UI can be created without adding anything new. Use old things well, in
intuitive ways, and you already are ahead of 99% of your competition anyway.

------
bgnm2000
As a professional UX guy, here are my two cents:

Do it : repeat.

If the best chance for practice you have, is on personal projects - so be it.

Find sites for inspiration. Design is ALWAYS changing. Things you're just
getting sick of now (chunky buttons, ribbons, page tears etc.) other designers
first saw a long time ago - those thing slowly saturate the design community
before they're everywhere.

Browse Dribbble.com every day.

When you have to design a site, use sites likes patterntap.com, and
uiparade.com to see great examples of slick UIs.

Most importantly, "eat your own dogfood." Use the products you've made, non-
stop. Just keep testing and testing. If things feel weird, or unnatural,
iterate, and eat more dogfood.

Design should never be something someone gets "right" the first time - its an
iterative process of learning user behavior based on what does or does not
perform well.

------
joelhooks
I think it is important to distinguish UX from UI design. UI Design is a facet
of UX, but actual user experience design delves deeper and is multi-faceted.

This diagram[1] shows the facets of UX exceptionally well. In the same vein,
this article[2] defines UX accurately.

[1] <http://uxdesign.com/assets/Elements-of-User-Experience.pdf>

[2] <http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined>

------
tagawa
Surely the first place to start is Jakob Nielsen's <http://www.useit.com>

Ignore the ugliness and you'll find practical advice in the reports and
Alertbox articles although his opinions are sometimes controversial and
shouldn't necessarily be followed to the letter. Nevertheless they'll
undoubtedly increase your awareness of the variety of user types out there and
encourage you to think from their perspective, which is ultimately what good
UI design is all about.

~~~
indspenceable
Doesn't it seem like a bad sign to say: "Here is where you should learn about
UI - just ignore the bad UI." For all I know there is lots of good content
there, but I'm immediately turned off of learning about UI from someone who
can't even be bothered to make it easy to parse his frontpage.

~~~
isleyaardvark
But it's not bad UI per se. It's just not particularly attractive.

To put it another way, I've never had a problem finding what I was looking for
on his site.

edit: here's another example of what I'm talking about:
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3215-liveauctioneers-an-
unlik...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3215-liveauctioneers-an-unlikely-
example-of-great-ui-design)

------
FreshCode
Read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. [http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-
Sense-Approach-Usability/...](http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-
Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107)

Read everything on Jakob Nielsen's blog about Usability: <http://useit.com/>

~~~
msutherl
It's good to read these guys, but it's nowhere near sufficient. Over time I've
lost my fondness of Nielsen. He's too much of an engineer and doesn't
understand subjective factors. Ever notice that his website has very poor
usability due to inappropriate (read: lazy) use of typography and proportion?

------
spion
Its not that interface design is a weak area for developers. The thing is, we
tend to spend very little time thinking about user interface (we like to jump
directly to books instead which will do the thinking for us).

I've found you can achieve quite a massive improvement by simply spending a
decent amount of time thinking about / working on / testing your UI.

Draw sketches, think about usage patterns, explain how things would work on
paper, ask random people to try out your designs after you're finished
implementing them, get feedback, identify actual usage patterns and optimize
for them. Repeat.

If possible, become a user of the product. It helps a lot.

The second most important thing is to copy other people's good interface
designs. Or less harshly put, use existing patterns, especially those widely
accepted by users. Check out popular websites and applications, see how they
solve your current UI subproblem, copy their solution, perhaps improve upon
it. Read about UI patterns and when to use them.

note: We're trained to think that copying is bad, originality is good. In UI,
the reverse is true - by copying you save time on user training as users are
already familiar with the design. There is nothing shameful about copying
other people's good UI design (and I don't mean the visual aspect of it)

Of course, this is not really a substitute for proper training - but quite
often its a really good first step which we seem to miss .

------
kadabra9
There are a ton of good blogs, articles and collections out there, this quora
post covers some good ones:

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-influential-UX-
design...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-influential-UX-design-blogs)

Also, create a bookmarks folder (or even just a regular folder on your
Desktop) just for collecting UX/UI designs that jump out or appeal to you.
Either bookmark them, or take a screenshot, and use good, descriptive tags
(e.g "Search Results", "Dashboard", etc). Then block out a small amount of
time each week(I usually spend like a half hour or so over Sunday morning
coffee) to review them; ask yourself why you like the designs/patterns, what
appeals to you, why its effective, how could it be more effective etc. You'll
start to recognize patterns and develop a sharper eye for effective UX/UI
design throughout the web.

Finally, accept and embrace the idea that good UX/UI design is very much an
iterative process, it's OK (and actually pretty common) to not get it perfect
the first time around.

------
zethus
Here's my UX bookmarks dump for reads/blogs to get started:

<http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1> <http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/>
<http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/> <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/>

As far as UI goes, spend a lot of time on design sites such as dribbble and
try to identify patterns and discover the purpose of them on your own. UI
design becomes more engrained when you discover trends (and their purposes)
rather than simply reading about them imo.

------
mtrn
Take a look at <http://ux.stackexchange.com/> \- a place to ask/answer/discuss
UX questions.

~~~
dave5104
Just want to pipe in and say this is a fantastic resource. It's a great place
if you have random questions like "Is it better to do this... or this?".
Posting lets you tap into the collective previous experiences of tons of
fellow UXers, which I've always had a good experience with. It's also nice for
just browsing and getting little tips on ways to design.

------
tern
An alternative approach:

– Start by reading "Magic Ink" by Bret Victor:
<http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk>

– Now you understand that UI design is actually graphic design, so start with
graphic design fundamentals. They are: Drawing, Layout, Typography, Color,
History.

– Drawing: understand how images are created on a canvas. Includes concepts of
how to use line, shade, and color to create forms, volumes, depth, etc. Art
historians talk about "color and line" in painting. Understand the
distinction. Pick up a used copy of Janson's History of Art. Peruse some other
books about drawing. Go to the museum. Whatever you come across. Have fun with
it.

– Layout: I haven't found a great resource for this. You can have a look at
Grid Systems by Josef Müller-Brockman, which set the tone for layout in the
20th century. Making and Breaking the Grid is a modern spin on grid-based
layout. Read about book design since that's the oldest and most developed
layout system. You can start with Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_design>. Generally pay attention to how
websites are arranged. Is there a top-bar or a side-bar? How many sections of
content are there? What is their relative proportion? How does the layout
relate to the borders of the browser window? Take some time to investigate
'responsive design'. Understand what it means to design from the content out
rather than from the edges in. Understand the fact that book design has a rich
set of systems of proportion while web designers completely ignore this for
the most part. Look up 'golden ratio typography'.

– Typography: there are a number of well-regarded classics on typography. The
Elements of Typographic Style is great. But you should start with this:
<http://webtypography.net/>. Then check out the Wikipedia entry and Google
around for blog posts about typography. Once you understand the basics, then
attempt an in-depth text. The most important thing to understand is that
typography can be used to create structure. People who do not understand this
use lines, planes, and volumes to create structure around content. A good
place to learn about this is in Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information (as well as its sequels). He vigorously recommends
removing as much "non-data ink" as possible. Beyond structure, there is the
issue of choosing typefaces. Let me just get this one out of the way: serif
faces are not significantly easier to read than sans-serif faces. Beyond that,
understand that typefaces are created by designers for different uses. Use
typefaces according to what they're designed for. Understand how typefaces are
used to create a stylistic feel, to evoke associations, nostalgia, emotion.
Understand that some typefaces are expressive and some are not. The web so far
has favored non-expressive typefaces. Now that we have @font-face and Google
Fonts, people are going crazy using different type-faces will-nilly. Web
design will evolve. Watch the documentary "Helvetica".

– Color: there are many resources on color, but the study of color is an
endeavor that can last a lifetime. There are a few things to understand about
color: what it is (light frequency / a sensation), how it is modelled (Newton
vs. Goethe, HSL/RGB, color spaces, Pantone), how it is created, how colors are
combined, the fundamental nature of each hue, and psychological meaning of
color combinations. Start with the Wikipedia entry. For more scientific
information, check out the IESNA handbook. Understand the difference between
Newton's and Goethe's studies of color and how current theories descend from
those. After them came Maxwell, Helmholtz, and others. Munsell's text is
responsible for much of the exploration of color in early modernist painting
(impressionism, etc.):
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26054/26054-h/26054-h.htm>. Study color
combining by way of texts from the early 20th century by Albers, Itten, etc.
But, as others have mentioned, the only way to truly understand color is to
use it. Try different combinations, see what they do. Ask questions like: why
are most websites blue? Why aren't websites ever yellow? Beyond cultural
associations, each color has a fundamentally different nature and use. It's
not just a spectrum. Why is red so special? Notice that blue and yellow are,
in Goethe's theory, the fundamental colors from which all colors are created.
Does this have something to do with their neutrality? The sun is yellow, the
sky is blue, the ocean is blue... what does it all mean? Why are the road
signs green?

– History: web design didn't just come out of nowhere, though most web
designers are uneducated and the tools have been very primitive up until the
last few years, so it kind of seems that way. Find a copy of Meggs' History of
Design. Understand what it is, where it comes from, how book design is the
father of graphic design. Then, something crucial to understand: that web
design is constrained by the concepts of the past, which were developed in a
world with different constraints. Do you know how graphics were created before
computers?

Unfortunately there is no good book that gives an overview of all of this
material. You need to piece it together. Here's a screenshot of my library of
design books:
[http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7795/screenshot20120731at...](http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7795/screenshot20120731at120.png).
Plus you should have a library of design inspiration. I have mine spread out
between LittleSnapper and ZooTool right now. Evernote is another good way if
you can stand all the visual noise in their interface. Other people use
Pinterest, etc.

What you should take away from this is that UI design is actually part of
graphic design, which is a relatively old discipline (though still young
compared to, say, architecture).

On the other hand it can be said that UI/UX rather encompasses graphic design
since UX brings in the notion of user-centered design from HCI, which has its
own history in psychology and the US military industrial complex. Two great
historical reads here are MIL STD 1472F:
<http://www.hf.faa.gov/docs/508/docs/milstd14.pdf> and The Ecological Approach
to Visual Perception by J.J. Gibson (from whence the concept of "affordance"
comes). The classic synthesis of these ideas can be found in The Design of
Everyday Things by Donald Norman. Bill Buxton is another person to follow in
this space. A modern synthesis of UX is About Face 3: The Essentials of
Interaction Design.

EDIT: fixed links

~~~
GuiA
Completing the above, now for UX:

— Start by reading "Designing with the mind in mind" by Jeff Johnson
([http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-
In...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-
Interface/dp/012375030X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343755641&sr=8-1&keywords=designing+with+the+mind+in+mind))

— Now you understand that UX design is actually cognitive psychology +
sociology. Of course, most cognitive psychology/sociology books will only be
slightly relevant to UX design. Here's a short selection to get you started:

— Don Norman, Design of Everyday Objects

— Don Norman, Emotional Design

— Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater

— Kim Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered
Products and Servicesa

— Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions

Bonus:

— Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design (meant for video game design,
but has a lot of lessons that can be applied to good UX)

For UI design, I'd also heavily recommend "Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams,
Networks, Maps" by Jacques Bertin, and anything by Tufte. These titles are
more about data visualization, but most UIs need a way to visualize data in
some shape or form.

One point that msutherl forgot in his fantastic comment is animation (as in,
2D animation). UIs are not static things, and animators have spent decades
understanding how we react emotionally to animations (Good introductory read:
<http://labs.oracle.com/techrep/1995/smli_tr-95-33.pdf>). Good animation in a
UI makes a whole lot of difference— Apple knows that
([http://watchingapple.com/2007/06/are-apple-ui-designers-
lear...](http://watchingapple.com/2007/06/are-apple-ui-designers-learning-
from-pixar/)).

For this, only one resource: "The Animator's Survival Kit", by Richard
Williams.

~~~
msutherl
Thanks dude. Totally agree about Designing with the Mind in Mind. Another
similar book is 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. Here's a
little gem that summarizes some of that material:
<http://uxmag.com/articles/psychological-usability-heuristics>

Excited to check out some of the stuff I haven't come across there.

------
deafbybeheading
To me, a turning point in my feelings on UX was reading Alan Cooper's "The
Inmates are Running the Asylum" [1]. It's a little anti-engineer (he argues
that engineers cannot do this right and you always need dedicated UX people),
but he explains core interaction design principles very well.

E.g., he draws a distinction between mere UI design and interaction design: UI
design is just layering another abstraction (the interface in question) on the
underlying software architecture, whereas interaction design starts with what
the user wants to accomplish, and adapts the underlying pieces to enable that.

Note that this is not a UI book, or even really all that much of a UX book,
but it does make a great argument for the importance of user interaction.

[1]: <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=553473>

------
chr15
I started a weekly newsletter that provides design-related articles and tips:
<http://seriffed.com>

Like you, I wanted to improve my design skills, so I coded this up over
several weekends.

~~~
maerek
Chris - can you elaborate a bit more on this newsletter? What sort of content
it covers, how you source data, etc.? Just signed up and am interested to
learn more.

Thanks!

~~~
chr15
Hey Maerek, thanks for signing up! I try to cover typography, frontend
techniques, interviews with designers, industrial design, and branding. It's a
broad range of topics that I'm interested in learning more about since I come
from a backend coding background.

You can view some past issues here:

<http://seriffed.com/issue/6/> <http://seriffed.com/issue/5/>

If you have any ideas on how I can improve, I would love to hear them.

------
jacobroufa
I've been finding that just simply mocking up the sites/apps I'm building or
even just pieces of their functionality has helped me refine what I feel is
implementation of good user experience. The marker comes down to "Would I use
that?", and more often than not, as fast as I can get a page up it's no match
for a mockup that comes to fruition even quicker. Check out Balsamiq
(<http://www.balsamiq.com/>) for the app that I choose to use. I also lurk
ux.stackexchange.com, as mtrn suggested it's a great resource.

------
maerek
I've been fortunate enough to attend talks given by both Luke Wroblewski
(LUKEW, <http://www.lukew.com/>) and Joshua Clarke (Global Moxie,
<http://globalmoxie.com>). Both have written excellent books on design
principles and UX/UI implementation (Luke on web form design, Joshua on app
interfaces and design).

If you're interested in web standards and design, <http://www.alistapart.com/>
is also a great site to follow.

------
ejpastorino
Try to understand design, and analyze sites and designs you like.

I highly recommend reading David Kadavy's "Design For Hackers":
<http://designforhackers.com/>

~~~
kadavy
Hey, thanks for the mention!

------
madoublet
A lot of resources mentioned here are great and a really good starting point.
If you decide that you want to get serious about UI/UX, I would highly
recommend looking into a graduate or certification program. I have heard good
things about Human Factors (humanfactors.com) and a number of universities
offer HCI certificates. I am currently working toward one at Missouri S&T.

------
dochtman
A Coursera course on Human-Computer Interaction?

<https://www.coursera.org/course/hci>

~~~
smartial_arts
Second that, it's an awesome course. Prof Scott Klemmer knows his stuff real
well and is really passionate about the subject.

Highly recommend to take next class when it starts in September.

------
iamailuj
Coursera.org is a good resource. I really enjoyed the Human Computer
Interaction Course: <https://www.coursera.org/course/hci>

There were lectures and assignments built around design heuristics, different
aspects of prototyping and you have to design your own application as part of
the course grade.

------
rwhitman
My favorite book on UX has been "Designing the Obvious" by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
[http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Obvious-Approach-
Application...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Obvious-Approach-Application-
Edition/dp/0321749855/)

Might be a little dated but it was really influential a few years back

------
didgeoridoo
Getting involved in your local UX community can be a good way to find mentors
and experts who can help you grow. Be a sponge, and try to understand how
these people look at the world.

Looks like you're in Houston, so: <http://www.uxhappyhour.com/hou>

------
patheman
Check out <http://dribbble.com/> for inspiration on graphic design.

Widely adopted UI Patterns for solving UX Problems: <http://ui-
patterns.com/patterns>

search on slideshare for UX / Usability presentations for Devs

------
lgilchrist
More design pattern inspiration: <http://littlebigdetails.com/>
<http://mobile-patterns.com/>

Also, Smashing Mag has occasional great articles on design patterns and ux.

------
jeremyt
Here's some stuff to get you started. Wrote this a little while ago:

[http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/books-on-user-
experience-...](http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/books-on-user-experience-
and-user-interface-design)

------
mva
_shameless self promotion_ \- On our company blog you can find lots of
articles which can improve your UX/UI skills:

<http://blog.usabilla.com/category/design/>

------
AlphaDex
Give this site a try: <http://www.siteownernews.com/website-usability/>

------
pgambling
Wow HN readers, you're awesome! I didn't expect such a wealth of information
when I posted this an hour ago. Keep it coming!

------
petervandijck
Best of all: observe users use products. (ie. do usability testing.)

------
BaconJuice
I use sites like patterntap for transpiration.

------
uxabhishek
Focussing on being a better UI designer is not the way to start.

Be a better problem solver first (more so a UX Designer). You should not just
start working on being a better UI designer without knowing what context your
work will exist in. Specialize in UI later.

A quick overview on how to be a better UX designer \- Figure out and write
down in minimum words the goals and reasons for undertaking the exercise

\- Figure out the main types of users you are designing for (don't try to
design for everyone). Find out what relevant mental model they already have.

\- Break down the problem via concept maps (involve others to brainstorm).

\- Sketch several solution hypothesis using flow diagrams (boxes containing
major concepts connected to each other) (involve others to brainstorm).

\- Compare these flow diagrams and identify the best hypothesis to develop and
test first. (Failure is okay)

\- Now do UI design for each aspect of the selected flow diagram (as you will
know how each page/area in the flow diagram works with the entire picture,
you'll know what to show the user when.)

\- Do not try to complicate your test by adding features/distractions that are
not extremely crucial.

\- Put in some love and care. Ideas that spawned from your brain have the
possibility of giving so many others so much joy.

(Hint* For a lot of products it is about making MOST users get engaged for the
LONGEST period. For many others it is about solving a user problem in the
Simplest+Quickest+Most-Painless+Most-Joyful way possible.)

A bit more on how to be a better UI designer

\- Go back to the basics and learn how humans sense, how the brain perceives,
and what makes us get ideas, form opinions and take action. This is a big part
of what UX and UI design is about (this is useful to understand and remember
too - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology#Properties>)

\- It is also about having a two way conversation between an interface and a
human. Follow protocols of a decent and efficient conversation. Empathize.
Introduce if you haven't met before. Maintain a flow. Be focussed on the goal.
Don't distract and value their time. Be terse. Don't disrespect.

\- Know that content is always more important than the user interface. Strive
for harmony between what you have to say with how you are saying it with the
best UI for that purpose). Use the help of a copy editor or a technical
writer. Ensure they don't write more than is needed.

\- Learn about the medium and context you are designing for (e.g. how users
use computers, web etc)

\- Learn about the existing UI patterns that you can leverage

\- Browse a lot. Note down what you like, store it as a pattern in your head.
Note what irritates you and think about how it could be done better for more
users.

\- Practice. A Lot.

\- Get hold of a good designer and sit next to them. See them work. See how
they make their life faster and easier while designing. Optimize your
workspace continuously. Look out for new tools that can help your workflow.

\- Generating consensus around the flow and UI solution is your job. Get the
stakeholders to see the way you think.

-Don't use Colors initially, they derail conversations quickly as humans are prone to judging colors instinctively. Use grayscale and rough way of doing stuff first. Finalize (visual design) after that.

\- Ensure that the colors did not change the flow of user's attention on a
page.

-Figure out if the flow of user's attention on a page is the way you intend

\- Grab five people, give then some basic context and do RITE
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RITE_Method> ). Don't listen to all feedback.
Designers usually give feedback based on heuristics. Try to get more designers
to give you feedback.

\- Use web based tools as often as you can. It is easy to share your work and
get feedback quickly. There are tools for getting feedback online. But have a
meeting at least once initially to explain the context and thinking behind
your design decisions.

