Design bookmarks













5 Practical Solutions to Make Reponsive Data Tables - Michał Jarosz

https://medium.com/appnroll-publication/5-practical-solutions-to-make-responsive-data-tables-ff031c48b122

Five approaches to responsive data tables, with clear examples.

data visualisation, visual design

50 things you probably forgot to design - Jon Moore

https://medium.com/ux-power-tools/50-things-you-probably-forgot-to-design-7a288b0ef914

A check list to make sure you've designed everything your app/website might need.

visual design

6 Proven Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Call-to-Action Buttons

https://copyblogger.com/call-to-action-buttons/

product

7 rules for creating gorgeous UI part 1 - Erik D Kennedy

https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-1-559d4e805cda

An article giving practical advice for good looking user interfaces.

visual design

7 rules for creating gorgeous UI part 2 - Erik D Kennedy

https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-2-430de537ba96

The second part of the article giving practical advice on how to create gorgeous UI

visual design

A Beg­inner’s Guide to Finding User Needs

https://jdittrich.github.io/userNeedResearchBook/

An online guide to research.

research

A Canon of User Experience

http://www.bogieland.com/postings/post_canonux.php

Peter J. Bogaards has put together a list of the works that make up the canon of UX design.

interaction design

A Complete Guide to Iconography - Bonnie Kate Wolf

https://www.designsystems.com/iconography-guide/

visual design

A Five Minute Guide To Better Typography - Pierrick Calvez

http://pierrickcalvez.com/journal/a-five-minutes-guide-to-better-typography

A fun and quick introduction to the rules of typography.

visual design

A nearly one page summary of Jef Raskin's design rules

https://mprove.de/script/02/raskin/designrules.html

Taken from The Humane Interface.

interaction design

A plea for lean software - Niklaus Wirth

https://github.com/sysprv/demo-corporate-documentation-public/blob/master/Niklaus%20Wirth%20-%20A%20Plea%20for%20Lean%20Software.pdf

A paper about how software gets bloated/complicated, and the reasons behind it.

quality

A Proven Method for Showing the Value of Good UX - Jared Spool

https://articles.uie.com/a-proven-method-for-showing-the-value-of-good-ux/

An article in which Jared lays out a practical way to prove the value of UX design

product

A Simple Web Developer’s Color Guide - Laura Elizabeth

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/04/web-developer-guide-color/

A practical guide to creating a colour scheme for a website/app.

visual design

A unified theory for designing just about anything - Christina Wodtke

https://medium.com/@cwodtke/a-unified-theory-for-designing-just-about-anything-b87f1e4f050b

Suggests the CAMP acronym: Context (Where/who/why/how?), Architecture (How will it be structured?), Mechanics (What specific methods will be used in it?), Poetics (How will it make people feel?)

product

Aaron Draplin Logo Design Challenge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOPA0NaeTBk

A video where Aaron Draplin of Draplin Design designs a logo in a short amount of time. Very interesting as a quick look at the logo design process.

graphic design

Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design Synthesis - Jon Kolko

http://www.jonkolko.com/writingAbductiveThinking.php

An article about how design synthesis appears magical to observers, and that's why it and research are often discounted.

research

All the user-facing states - Eric Bailey

https://ericwbailey.website/published/all-the-user-facing-states/

interaction design

All The Widgets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw

A video compilation showing how interactions worked in operating systems that were popular around 1990, which is a lot of operating systems.

interaction design

An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues - Anne Gibson

https://the-pastry-box-project.net/anne-gibson/2014-July-31

26 different examples of ways in which people could have accessibility issues, both temporary and permanent. Gives you a sense of the things you should be aware of when designing something for everyone.

interaction design

Are rebrands starting to look the same? The challenges defining commercial design - Elizabeth Goodspeed

https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/why-do-rebrands-all-look-the-same-thematic-graphic-design-120923

A sensible outline of the reasons that companies often follow trends for their re-brands, rather than try for something that feels original.

visual design

Assessing dimensions of perceived visual aesthetics of web sites

https://www.ise.bgu.ac.il/faculty/noam/papers/04_tl_nt_ijhcs.pdf

A scientific paper about the importance of beauty in design. Origin of "classical" vs. "expressive" aesthetics.

visual design

Awesome TUIs

https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis?tab=readme-ov-file

A curated collection of interesting text-only user interfaces (TUIs).

visual design

Be the browser’s mentor, not its micromanager

https://buildexcellentwebsit.es

Andy Bell / Set Studio's manifesto.

development, visual design

Big Tech's big downgrade - Ed Zitron

https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-companies-ruining-apps-websites-internet-worse-google-facebook-amazon-2023-3?r=US&IR=T

quality

Blending modes - Dan Hollick

https://typefully.com/DanHollick/blending-modes-KrBa0JP

visual design

Bringing Design to Software - Mitch Kapor

https://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/1-kapor.html

product

Building Your Color Palette

https://www.refactoringui.com/previews/building-your-color-palette

An excerpt from Refactoring UI. A good practical introduction to colour palette choices.

visual design

C.R.A.P.: The Four Principles of Sound Design

https://www.dailyblogtips.com/crapthe-four-principles-of-sound-design/

Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. I learned about this visual principles from Robin Williams' "The Non-Designer's Design Book", and so should you, but here they are in case you don't want to buy a book.

visual design

Card-based classification evaluation

http://boxesandarrows.com/card-based-classification-evaluation/

Describes a method for testing an information architecture/navigation proposal using index cards, rather than a paid online tool.

research

Career Cold Start - Andrew Bosworth

http://boz.com/articles/career-cold-start.html

A practical approach if you join an established company/start a new job or team as a new person and want to become knowledgeable as quickly as possible. Essentially you sit down with everyone and ask them three questions.

career, product

Chasing the Pixel-Perfect Dream - Josh W Comeau

https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/pixel-perfection/

quality, visual design

Checklist Design

https://www.checklist.design/

A collection of checklists that you can use to guide you about what elements to include in a page or component.

visual design, interaction design

Chinese Mobile App UI Trends

http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-trends.html

A long article which looks at how app design in China is different from app design in the west.

visual design, interaction design

Classic HCI Demos

https://jackrusher.com/classic-ux/

A collection of software design demos from history. Early / foundational designs demonstrated.

interaction design

Collection of falsehoods that programmers believe about things

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

This is a collection of links to articles listing falsehoods or misconceptions that programmers might believe about things (Names, time, dates). It's useful for testing assumptions when designing for building software, especially.

product

Color and Contrast

https://colorandcontrast.com/

An interactive book, more or less, about colour and contrast and how vision works. Good as a reference.

visual design

Color in UI - A practical framework - Erik D. Kennedy

https://learnui.design/blog/color-in-ui-design-a-practical-framework.html

A practical approach to colour theory for designers who don't understand it naturally.

visual design

Combining Typefaces - Tim Brown

https://blog.typekit.com/2016/04/29/combining-typefaces-free-guide-to-great-typography/?ref=lapaninja

A short book about pairing typefaces that was made freely available after the publisher closed down.

book, visual design

Common Indicators - Abby Covert

http://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/chapter/5/page/91/common-indicators/

A list of things that are commonly measured to find out how something is performing, good or bad. For inspiration

product, research, interaction design

Copy if you can - Erik D Kennedy

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/02/improving-ui-design-skills-copywork/

An article on learning good user interface / UI design through copying other people's work

visual design

Craft - Paul Stamatiou

https://paulstamatiou.com/craft/

A long post about shipping high quality, well-crafted software.

quality

Craft and beauty: The business value of form in function

https://stripe.com/gb/sessions/2024/craft-and-beauty-the-business-value-of-form-in-function

Katie Dill of Stripe, Karri of Linear, talk about quality in software.

quality

“Craft at scale” is a white whale - Adam Stoddard

https://aaadaaam.com/notes/craft-at-scale/

quality

DALL·E 2 and The Origin of Vibe Shifts - Nathan Baschez

https://every.to/divinations/dall-e-2-and-the-origin-of-vibe-shifts

aesthetics

Data Viz Project

https://datavizproject.com/

A list of different chart / graph types, with explanations of what they do and could be used for.

data visualisation

Dead Simple Techniques for Using Branding in UI - Christian Beck

https://medium.com/ux-power-tools/dead-simple-techniques-for-using-branding-in-ui-d44cb44e40ee

An article about using UI techniques to apply your branding to interface components/screens

visual design

Demystifying "Craft" - Ron Goldin

https://rongoldin.substack.com/p/three-kinds-of-design-craft

An attempt to define "Craft"

quality

Design Principles: Visual Weight And Direction - Steven Bradley

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/12/design-principles-visual-weight-direction/

Includes a list of the things that affect visual weight.

visual design

Design Quality is coupled with Business - Hardik Pandya

https://hvpandya.com/design-quality-and-business

quality

Designer Hangout Slack Community

https://userexperiencedesign.slack.com

A community for UX designers. Might take a few weeks to be verified, as they don't let in anyone but designers.

career

Designing complex desktop interfaces - Paavan Buddhdev

https://paavandesign.com/blog/designing-complex-desktop-interfaces

interaction design

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste - Pierre Bordieu

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book)

A book about how people with more capital (not necessarily money) set the taste of a culture. The Wikipedia article has a good summary.

book, aesthetics

Do we appreciate humanity’s deeper aesthetic needs? - Stein Haugen

https://heydays.medium.com/do-we-appreciate-humanitys-deeper-aesthetic-needs-1d5032ac772a

aesthetics

Edit wear and Read wear

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/142750.142751

A paper about how you can show which parts of an interface/document have been used more.

interaction design

Eight behaviours for smarter teams

https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/917018/Eight-Behaviors-for-Smarter-Teams-2.pdf

The eight behaviours outlined in this report will help any team to work better, but are difficult to do.

quality

Ensuring Excellence - Marty Cagan

https://www.svpg.com/ensuring-excellence/

quality

Ergonomic criteria for the evaluation of human-computer interfaces - Christian Bastien and Dominique Scapin

https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00070012/document

A paper about the 11 criteria for judging interfaces. A good outline of the factors of interaction design.

interaction design

Essential resources to design complex data tables - Stephanie Walter

https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/essential-resources-design-complex-data-tables/

A collection of posts that cover ways to design complex data tables.

visual design

Evolution of the scrollbar

https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/

interaction design

'Eyeballing' or Optical Alignment in Design - Sergey Vlastiuk

https://medium.com/ringcentral-ux/eyeballing-or-optical-alignment-in-design-4ef5ab2d326f

A guide to how optical alignment works, and why mathematical alignment doesn't, always.

visual design

Family Values

https://benji.org/family-values

A write-up of the approach taken to the Family crypto app, which is a particularly good example of quality in interface design.

interaction design, quality

Fast Software, the Best Software - Craig Mod

https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/

quality

First Principles - Chris Butler

https://www.chrbutler.com/hire-for-first-principles

An article that argues companies should hire based on the principles of a person, not their skillset.

career

First Principles of Interaction Design - Bruce Tognazzini

https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/

A list of principles of interaction design by a "grandfather" of the industry.

interaction design

Five principles for minimal design - Carl Barenberg

https://cmhb.de/minimal-design

visual design

Fontpair

https://www.fontpair.co

A collection of pairs of open source fonts as used in the wild.

visual design

For the love of god please tell me what your company does - Kasper Kubica

https://hackernoon.com/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell-me-what-your-company-does-c2f0b835ab92

A funny article about the websites that use a lot of marketing speak but don't really tell you what their company does

product

Formulas for optical adjustments - Bjango / Marc Edwards

https://bjango.com/articles/opticaladjustments/

visual design

Four paths for working with a designer

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/01/working-with-a-designer-four-paths.html

Outlines the four approaches to working with a designer, when giving them the brief. This is written for clients of designers, but understanding these four approaches can help any designer to communicate what they NEED from a client, and what their expectations might be.

product

Good North Star, Bad North Star - Jeff Zych

https://jlzych.com/2022/04/24/good-north-star-bad-north-star/

How (and how not) to create product concepts that help keep product teams excited about the future in a practical way.

product

Good UI

https://goodui.org/

A list of UI/layout ideas that were tried and tested. Mostly focused on marketing sites/landing/e-commerce pages with a focus on conversion.

visual design, interaction design, product

Graphic Designers Have Always Loved Minimalism. But At What Cost? - Jarrett Fuller

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/graphic-designers-have-always-loved-minimalism-but-at-what-cost/

A brilliant article about minimalism in graphic design and where it comes from

graphic design

GUIdebook

https://guidebookgallery.org/index

A website that preserves screenshots of graphical user interfaces throughout history.

visual design

Guidelines for Designing User Interface Software - Sidney Smith and Jane Mosier

https://www.interruptions.net/literature/Smith-Mosier-Guidelines.pdf

A long list of user interface/interaction guidelines.

interaction design

Hackernews comments on John Gruber's post about Android interface quality

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34611552

A good insight into how some people think about interface quality.

quality

How designers can help drive better engineering practices around user interfaces - Jehad Affoneh

https://www.mynameisjehad.com/how-designers-can-help-drive-better-engineering-practices-around-user-interfaces/

quality

How I won the Lottery - Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions - XOXO Festival (2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw

career, product

How to choose an interpolation for your color scale - Lisa Charlotte Muth

https://blog.datawrapper.de/interpolation-for-color-scales-and-maps/

data visualisation

How to develop good taste - Die Workwear

http://oxs.335.myftpupload.com/2022/08/26/how-to-develop-good-taste-pt-1/

A post about developing taste in fashion, but the principles apply to interface design as well.

quality, visual design

Icones

https://icones.js.org

A collection of what seems like every open source icon set.

visual design

Icons Should be Complementary - Text is Always Better - Brad Taunt

https://tdarb.org/blog/use-text-not-icons.html

visual design, interaction design

Idea, Execution, and Market - Balaji S. Srinivasan

https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/startup/lecture_slides/lecture5-market-wireframing-design.pdf

Part of a course on startups. Talks about ideas vs execution.

product

Indistinguishable from Magic - Packy McCormick

https://www.notboring.co/p/indistinguishable-from-magic

quality

Interaction museum

https://hci-museum.lisn.upsaclay.fr

A collection of creative / innovative interaction designs.

interaction design

Introduction to minimalist design

http://understandingminimalism.com/introduction-to-minimalist-design/

A definition of what minimalist design is.

visual design

Invisible details of interaction design - Rauno Freiberg

https://rauno.me/craft/interaction-design

interaction design, quality

Is this my interface or yours? - John Saito

https://medium.com/@jsaito/is-this-my-interface-or-yours-b09a7a795256

An article about whether to use "My" or "Your" in user interfaces.

visual design

Jonas Löwgren

http://jonas.lowgren.info

An expert in interaction design.

interaction design

Julian Lehr

https://julian.digital

A set of articles that dive into the theory of interaction design/software products.

interaction design

Kathy Sierra’s Featuritis Curve

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3781-kathy-sierras-featuritis-curve-helps

A graph that shows how people respond as you add more and more features to software.

quality

Kineticons (CHI 2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GhfHO9clTY

A video which shows various ways you can animate e.g. an app icon. Good for inspiration.

interaction design

Learning to See

https://ia.net/topics/learning-to-see

A long article by the designer of iA Writer about how designers and non-designers see. Touches on aesthetics, simplicity, all that good stuff.

visual design, interaction design

Legibility

https://legible-typography.com/en/

A free online book about what makes text/typography legible.

visual design, book

Lessons of Design - Fabricio Teixeira

https://lessons.design/

career

Line length revisited: following the research - Mary Dyson

https://designregression.com/article/line-length-revisited-following-the-research

visual design

Linear Polishing Season AMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz1L7ht3a_M

Linear dedicated December 2022 to improving the quality of Linear. They did an event where they answer questions about this.

quality

Logobook

http://www.logobook.com

A collection of logos in black and white only (No greyscale, no colour), most of which are famous/well designed. Good for inspiration and encouragement to stick to simple logos!

graphic design

Lorem Picsum

https://picsum.photos

A service which lets you use placeholder images of whatever size/dimensions you want for free, to test in web designs.

visual design, development

Magic Ink

http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/

A long article on software design theory.

interaction design

Mandate levels - John Cutler

https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-2752-mandate-levels

A theory about how different teams work under different "mandates": their work starts or stops at different places on the list/levels of impact their work can make.

product

Masnick's Impossibility Theorem: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well - Mike Masnick

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well/

These same concepts are relevant to quality being impossible at scale.

quality

Measuring design quality with heuristics - Jasmine Friedl

https://uxdesign.cc/measuring-design-quality-with-heuristics-44857efa514

quality

Menus, Metaphors and Materials: Milestones of User Interface Design - Boris Müller

https://borism.medium.com/menus-metaphors-and-materials-milestones-of-user-interface-design-f3f75481c46c

The importance of history in interface design.

quality

MIX08 Microsoft Office 2007: The Story of the Ribbon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiNeUTgGkk

Jensen Harris goes into the increasing bloat of Office applications.

visual design, interaction design

Modern Font Stacks

https://modernfontstacks.com

If you want a specific style of typeface, this website gives you a font family stack you can use that'll include every operating system's best local font of that type.

visual design

Modern iOS Navigation Patterns - Frank Rausch

https://frankrausch.com/ios-navigation

interaction design

More Chinese Mobile UI Trends

http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/01/31/more-chinese-mobile-ui-trends.html

A follow-up article outlining more UI details that are different in China from mobile design in the West

visual design, interaction design

Mouse Cursor History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg

A video about the mouse cursor, where the author creates his own set of mouse cursors after explaining how they got to be how they are today.

interaction design, visual design

Multi-Device Layout Patterns - Luke Wroblewski

https://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1514

A high level view of the ways you can collapse content as the viewport size shrinks.

visual design

My Advice on How to Be a Terrible but Valuable PM

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/comments/1ifpc29/my_advice_on_how_to_be_a_terrible_but_valuable_pm/

A list of tips product managers can use to look valuable and get ahead, even if they're not good at their job.

product, career

Myanmar’s Farmers and their Smartphones - Craig Mod

https://craigmod.com/essays/smartphones_in_myanmar/

A long article about how people in a developing country, Myanmar, use their mobiles / smartphones.

research

Never Use Black - Ian Storm Taylor

https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/

An article about how flat black should never be used in interface design, since it's not a natural colour.

visual design

Notes on Robert Greene's book Mastery

https://www.grahammann.net/book-notes/mastery-robert-greene

A good set of notes of how anyone should approach mastery of their field. Heavy focus on the apprenticeship model, and the mindset you should have.

career

Notes on Taste - Brie Wolfson

https://www.are.na/blog/notes-on-taste

aesthetics

Oberon (Native Oberon 2.3.7) - Systems with JT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJGnpmnXR5w

A video introduction to Niklaus Wirth's operating system, Oberon, which has some fascinating interaction patterns.

interaction design

On design and research - Jonathan Baker-Bates

https://webtorque.org/ux-research-design/

Explores an approach to research and setting direction. Very interesting.

research

Optical effects in user interfaces - Slava Shestopalov

https://medium.muz.li/optical-effects-9fca82b4cd9a

A guide to visual weight and other optical tricks to be aware of when designing interfaces.

visual design

Optimizing For Feelings - The Browser Company

https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/optimizing-for-feelings

quality

Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning

https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2

Touches on both the pace of layers in society (Fashion, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture, Nature) and the idea that some things are more fixed and more difficult to change, as with homes (Stuff, space plan, services, skin, structure, site)

product

People can read their manager's mind - Yossi Kreinin

http://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.html

The theory that people do what their manager rewards, rather than what their manager says is the right thing to do.

career

People don't work as much as you think - David R. MacIver

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/people-dont-work-as-much-as-you-think?s=r

career

People expect technology to suck

https://www.kilobitspersecond.com/2020/09/22/people-expect-technology-to-suck/

An article about how often technology doesn’t work, and how it affects most people’s expectations

quality

Plan to throw one away - Alan Cooper

https://mralancooper.medium.com/plan-to-throw-one-away-df05fde7bf63

A story about throwing away the first prototype you make for something, and building it again from scratch for the final version. This can be faster than trying to work with whatever rough prototype you created to prove the concept

product

Priority Guides: A content-first alternative to wireframes - Heleen van Nues, Lennart Overkamp

http://alistapart.com/article/priority-guides-a-content-first-alternative-to-wireframes

An article about priority guides, which are an early stage design tool to use instead of wireframes. They focus the team on content, and the importance of that content, and they leave specific layout questions until these important things have been decided.

visual design

Product Designer requirements - Alex Muench

https://paper.dropbox.com/published/Becoming-a-Product-designer-requirements-T2TC8MP45MlCG7sqrPhofQw

Basically a job spec listing all of the skills a high-end product designer should have. Think of it like a checklist.

career

Product Management Principles - Alex Roe

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sx5f13_BbLnblTUK4_KfyXfA9TWBwGgh-ThM8FlaZcI/edit

A list of practical product management principles to consider.

product

Prof. Dr. style

http://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/

A look at the design of early, hand-built websites made by professors. An interesting history lesson about the early days of the internet, and how some common styles/trends came to be.

visual design

Progression.fyi

https://www.progression.fyi/

A collection of progression frameworks that companies use to manage the careers of their employees, promotions, raises, etc.

career

Quality in Software - Rasmus Andersson

https://vimeo.com/646398677

quality

Quality of experience - defining the criteria for effective interaction design - Lauralee Alben

https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/235008.235010

interaction design, quality

Quantity leads to quality (the origin of a parable) - Austin Kleon

https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-quality-the-origin-of-a-parable/

The origin of the quality / quantity pottery story.

quality

Reality has a surprising amount of detail - John Salvatier

http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail

quality

Reality has a surprising amount of detail - Taylor Pearson

https://taylorpearson.me/overconfidence-bias/

product

Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail: Business Edition

https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail/

product

Reasons not to become famous - Tim Ferriss

https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/

Tim outlines the reasons you don't want to be famous.

career

Resistance as a Resource

http://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/

Practical methods to approach people who resist new ideas or proposals, especially as a manager.

career

Reverse Engineering the InVision Interface - Jose Bento

https://uxdesign.cc/reverse-engineering-the-invision-interface-50a8e81b9e9b

An article about copying Invision's interface to learn about their UI choices / copy work

visual design

Rules for Autocomplete

http://jeremymikkola.com/posts/2019_03_19_rules_for_autocomplete.html

A list of things that autocomplete fields - like drop-downs - should follow.

interaction design

Ryan Singer - Christopher Alexander - A Pattern Language

https://vimeo.com/491222729

A 1.5 hour live stream where Ryan Singer of Basecamp gives an introduction to Christopher Alexander's work on pattern languages. Very high-level, very strategic way of understanding how design improves things.

interaction design

Science is a strong-link problem - Adam Mastroianni

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-problem

quality

Screensizes

https://www.screensizes.app/

Has information on screen sizes for all Apple devices, including resolution in points and real pixels, and safe area sizes. Very hard to find this information anywhere on the web.

visual design

Set Studio

https://set.studio

Andy Bell's design studio, which focuses on building websites the way the web wants them to be built.

quality, development

Seven shipping signals - 37signals

https://37signals.com/seven-shipping-principles

quality

Shaping Design articles by Jason Mesut

https://medium.com/shapingdesign

career

Shoes - Mehmet Aydin Baytas

https://www.baytas.net/blog/shoes/

Talks about the importance of cultural/personal knowledge when you design for a connection with people. Talks about "tourist vs. purist"

aesthetics

Simple Made Easy - Rich Hickey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8

A video about what "simple" and "easy" mean.

simplicity

Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity - Jon Kolko

http://www.jonkolko.com/writingSimplicityComplexity.php

simplicity

Simply Secure

https://simplysecure.org

A knowledge base/website focused on well designed security processes.

interaction design

Software Paper Cuts - Matthew Bischoff

https://matthewbischoff.com/software-paper-cuts/

interaction design

Staff Design

https://staff.design

A series of interviews by Brian Lovin about the state of senior/high level individual contributors. How well do companies support people who don't want to go into management?

career

Statcounter Globalstats

https://gs.statcounter.com

Aggregate device stats for website visits. Mobile vs. desktop, browser share, screen resolution popularity, etc.

interaction design

Stocketa - Paul Stamatiou

https://paulstamatiou.com/stocketa/

Paul documents the design decisions he made for his mobile app.

quality

Style Tiles and how they work - Samantha Warren

https://alistapart.com/article/style-tiles-and-how-they-work

An article explaining style tiles, which are a way to show and discuss style guides without letting content affect the conversation/critique.

visual design

Sweating the small stuff - Zack Sultan

https://slack.design/articles/sweating-the-small-stuff/

Slack's description of how they keep up with small detail improvements/maintain quality.

quality

Systems and software quality requirements and evaluation (SQuaRE) — Measurement of quality in use

https://www.iso.org/standard/35746.html

An ISO standard which lays out the factors of quality in software.

quality

Systems, math and explosions (in no particular order) - PJ Onori

https://pjonori.blog/posts/systems-math-explosions/

An article mostly about "combinatorial explosions", or why things get complicated fast/there are many more relationships when you add more elements

quality

Tacit Knowledge is a Real Thing

https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/

Argues for the existence of, and explains, tacit knowledge. Relevant to visual design learning.

career, visual design

Taste for Makers - Paul Graham

http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

quality

Tesler's Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_conservation_of_complexity

Also know as the Law of Conservation of Complexity.

interaction design

Text editing hates you too

https://lord.io/text-editing-hates-you-too/

interaction design

The ‘IxD Bauhaus’ – what happens next? - Rahul Sen

https://web.archive.org/web/20110728002331/http://johnnyholland.org/2011/04/18/the-ixd-bauhaus-what-happens-next/

An article about the Bauhaus movement in architecture and how the same thing happened in visual design, with the shift from skeuomorphism to flat design.

visual design

The 12 principles of animation as illustrated through Disney and Pixar films

https://ohmy.disney.com/movies/2016/07/20/twelve-principles-animation-disney/

An article about Disney's 12 principles of animation.

interaction design

The 13 Types of Displays That Are All (Unfortunately) Called Dashboards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWHsLAosIIg

A video that takes you through the 13 types of dashboard.

data visualisation

The Analysis of Beauty - William Hogarth

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Beauty

A book from the 1700s which tries to define the factors of beauty. This Wikipedia article has a summary.

quality, visual design, book

The Boring Designer - Cap Watkins

https://capwatkins.com/blog/the-boring-designer

career

The Case for Software Criticism - Sheon Han

https://www.wired.com/story/software-criticism/

quality

The Case Study Factory

https://essays.uxdesign.cc/case-study-factory/

An article about why boot camp designers all produce the same case study.

career

The Cost of Craft - George Kedenberg III

https://gk3fyi.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-craft

quality

The curriculum at the Bauhaus

https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/history/principles_curriculum/

Details of the curriculum students studied at the Bauhaus design school.

graphic design

The Data Visualisation Catalogue

https://datavizcatalogue.com

Shows different patterns for visualising data, like graphs and charts. Lets you search by function, which is great

data visualisation

The Day You Stopped Making Compromises on Product Quality - Peter Yang

https://creatoreconomy.so/p/the-day-you-stopped-making-compromises

quality

The Economics of Data Businesses - Abraham Thomas

https://pivotal.substack.com/p/economics-of-data-biz

A good introduction to the business model of a data business.

product

The Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design - Ben Shneiderman

https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/goldenrules.html

visual design, interaction design

The Essence of the Essence - Daniel Jackson

https://essenceofsoftware.com/posts/distillation/

A long summary of the book The Essence of Software. Mostly talks about the idea of "concepts" in designing software

interaction design

The Flat Design Era

https://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-interface-design

An article written in 2012 which criticises rich visual styles ("skeuomorphism") and promotes simple visual styles ("flat design"). Interesting as a look back at the other end of the pendulum swing.

visual design

The History of the Web

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/

A timeline of the web. Incredible.

development, product

The Junkification of Amazon Why does it feel like the company is making itself worse? - John Herrman

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/why-does-it-feel-like-amazon-is-making-itself-worse.html

quality

The King vs. Pawn Game of UI Design - Erik D. Kennedy

http://alistapart.com/article/the-king-vs-pawn-game-of-ui-design

An article approaching UI design principles from basics.

visual design

The Monster List of UX Books

https://airtable.com/shr8I9oWiYngztMXC/tblMYuqK7rYdWc9Du/viwgvzxe2l5jNen1G

An aggregated collection of UX book recommendations

book

The MVP is dead. Long live the RAT.

https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live-the-rat-233d5d16ab02

An article explaining the Riskiest Assumption Test.

product

The Myth of Metaphor - Alan Cooper

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~dcb/courses/CS3041/Myth-of-Metaphor.pdf

Explains the three paradigms of interface design: technology, metaphor, and idiom/idiomatic.

interaction design

The Need to Think and Talk like an Executive - Jared Spool

https://articles.uie.com/the-need-to-think-and-talk-like-an-executive/

An article in which Jared lays out ways that UX design can bring value to the business, in language that executives can understand.

product

The origin of the 80s aesthetic - Vox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCI8lPvr6SM

aesthetics

The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William-Hirstein/publication/233556531_The_Science_of_Art_A_Neurological_Theory_of_Aesthetic_Experience/links/00b4952c369894a163000000/The-Science-of-Art-A-Neurological-Theory-of-Aesthetic-Experience.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Eight factors that make art enjoyable.

graphic design, quality

The Secret of Making High-Quality Art (in Blender and Everywhere) - Gleb Alexandrov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMH_J_vcoqE

A video about using large, medium, and small shapes, with variety, in art to add visual interest.

visual design

The Simplicity Shift - Scott Jenson

https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf

A paper about the reality of companies making simplicity a core value.

simplicity

The six core disciplines of UX design - Nick Finck

https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalweb/5271635413

These are what Nick Ficnk things the core disciplines of UX design are. If you're trying to learn UX design, focusing on learning about each of these areas is a good idea! Later in your career, you could focus on one of these areas as your speciality.

career

The Small Web is Beautiful - Ben Hoyt

https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/

A long essay that mostly focuses on the development side, but that celebrates the "small web".

quality, simplicity

The ultimate guide to proper use of animation in UX - Taras Skytskyi

https://uxdesign.cc/the-ultimate-guide-to-proper-use-of-animation-in-ux-10bd98614fa9

interaction design

The Update, the Vent, and the Disaster - Rands

https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-the-disaster/

An article explaining the three types of one-to-one you can have with your team members

career

The Varieties Of Human Work - Steven Shorrock

https://safetydifferently.com/the-varieties-of-human-work/

product

The Website Obesity Crisis - Maciej Cegłowski

http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm

A talk (There's a video link at the top) about the problem with website download sizes increasing over time, and how it's ridiculous. Inspires a lot of my personal beliefs about bloat!

quality

Thirty hypotheses on interface aesthetics

http://amat-design.com/2021/12/02/thirty-hypotheses-on-interface-aesthetics/

An long article about the causes of good aesthetics in user interfaces.

visual design

Two kinds of usability - Ryan Singer

https://world.hey.com/rjs/19-two-kinds-of-usability-b9bc04d5

Ryan argues that you don’t need to do usability testing if you understand best practices and the user’s domain.

product

UI design checklist

https://www.notion.so/UI-Checklist-d47ae9676a004a9b9d942a7908ac9efd

A checklist by MDS / Matt D Smith that helps a designer make sure their visual design is as good as it can be.

visual design

Usability heuristic frameworks: which one is right for you? - Michael Kritsch

https://uxdesign.cc/usability-heuristic-frameworks-which-one-is-right-for-you-1962387b7cc

quality, interaction design

UX of Photography - Craig Sullivan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FYkTaXBQJ8

A presentation where Craig talks about how to choose good photography.

interaction design

UX with Intent Frames: Design and Analyze with Content Early - Simone Ehrlich

https://medium.com/workday-design/ux-with-intent-frames-design-and-analyze-with-content-early-674f4de94f94

An article about intent frames. Wireframes that don’t use content but that show the intent of each area of the design.

interaction design

Version Museum

https://www.versionmuseum.com/

A collection of screenshots showing old versions of famous websites.

visual design

Video placeholder

https://www.videoplaceholder.com

Placeholder videos that are hosted, so you can use them in your web design tests before you make your own videos.

development

Visual craftsmanship for all - Saee Vaze

https://uxdesign.cc/visual-craftsmanship-for-all-142b1c7da9a7

An article about improving visual design craftspersonship across the organisation, but I'm saving it because of the definition of the building blocks of visual design early in the article

visual design

Visual Vocabulary - Financial Times

https://github.com/ft-interactive/chart-doctor/tree/master/visual-vocabulary

A collection of chart and graph types and when they should be used, presented visually.

data visualisation

We only hire the Trendiest - Dan Luu

https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/

Talks about how tech companies pay too much attention to how trendy your past employers/companies were. It's about developers, but it's relevant to design.

career

Web Design Manifesto 2012 - Jeffrey Zeldman

http://www.zeldman.com/2012/05/18/web-design-manifesto-2012/

An article about the trend of large body text, in a single column, with nothing else on the page. This was written early in that trend.

visual design

Web Interface Guidelines - Rauno Freiberg

https://rauno.me/interfaces

A list of guidelines for a good web interface.

interaction design

Web Interface Handbook

https://imperavi.com/books/web-interface-handbook/

A decent collection of principles and techniques for designing on the web, with visual example.

visual design

What is “good design,” anyway? It’s crucial for design orgs to define quality - Peter Merholz

https://www.petermerholz.com/blog/what-is-good-design-anyway-its-crucial-for-design-orgs-to-define-quality/

quality

What is Product Quality? A Practical Definition - Dave Feldman

https://dfeldman.medium.com/what-is-product-quality-a-practical-definition-990d3ca6827

quality

What is Simple? - Hardik Pandya

https://hvpandya.com/simple

simplicity, quality

Why Everything Looks the Same - Ryan Duffy

https://medium.com/knowable/why-everything-looks-the-same-bad80133dd6e

I don't agree with the tone (sameness is bad) but this article has good examples and a reasonably fair overview of the reasons why this happens.

aesthetics

Why I Think Path App Is The Best Social Network Experience Ever - Chris Voss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIq51Pdkd6A

interaction design

Why software ends up complex - Alex Gaynor

https://alexgaynor.net/2020/nov/30/why-software-ends-up-complex/

simplicity, quality

Wicked Blocks

https://blocks.wickedtemplates.com

A collection of layouts for blocks you can use on a landing page. This is meant for tailwind CSS, but it works well as inspiration too since they show examples of each type.

visual design

Your Website Owes You Money

https://fictivekin.com/websystems

A guide by Fictive Kin. Covers the concepts behind a successful commercial website.

product

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