[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills? ___________________________________________________________________ Ask HN: How did you increase your UX skills? Hi HN, as a Software-Developer, I'm looking for resources that could help to raise my understanding of UX design. So a simple question: What helped you increase your UX skills? Author : staticBr Score : 139 points Date : 2022-07-19 05:48 UTC (1 days ago) | onion2k wrote: | _What helped you increase your UX skills?_ | | I started caring about users. I decided that I _genuinely_ want | them to enjoy using what I build - not in a "hey that's cool" or | "ooo that's beautiful" way, but in a "wow, doing that sucky task | I have to do every day is a bit less sucky now" way. I put effort | in to solving hard problems so I can make users lives a bit | easier. It turns out that thinking this way also makes my job | more fun. | matwood wrote: | This is what I was going to say, but even simpler...give a shit | how the UI/UX works and looks. That means thinking about the | details and how something is really used. | z3t4 wrote: | Getting feedback from users... And looking at statistics (what | they don't tell you will show up in quantity analysis) | lifeplusplus wrote: | My story/Ted-talk on how I a dev learned design: | | 1. I downloaded photoshop | | 2. Opened it | | 3. It was white page | | 4. I drew a red box | | 5. Stared at it (was it good? was it bad?) | | 6. Looked at other sites and tried recreating them | | 7. Eventually I learned how to use photoshop but I still didn't | get what made things look good, I just knew X looked better than | Y??? | | 8. I started to learn graphic design. | | 9. I learned lot of design principles, art functions, colors, | reptition, texture, ... yet it still didn't click. | | 10. Gave up but got interested in digital painting timelapse | videos, where authors would go over why they are doing what they | are doing. | | 11. I had epiphany!! Everything in design should have purpose. | Every thing that's visible or not should have a purpose, a | feeling, a message. Everything should be intentional. | Participated in lots of competitions and overtime honed visual | skills. | | 12. Ok now I could design beautiful stuff but what to put again, | I can make it pretty but what should be the content. Introducing | UX research. | | 13. Turns out you should do some research and gather some details | on what you want on the page. Who are you building for, what do | they want to see or do, what do you want to show/sell/convey. | | Summary of few rules: | | - Elements of design: Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Pattern, | Negative Space, Mass, Contrast, Proportion, Proximity, Spacing, | Balance, Photography, Positioning, Variety/Richness, Consistency, | Movement, Rhythm, Tone Of message, Theme, Typography.. you | manipulate these to do rest of things. | | - Things together are seen as one, things same color are seen as | together, and vice versa. | | - Contrast makes things stand out, contrast can be achieved by | altering color, size, spacing, arrows. | | - Colors give feeling (excited, calm, stability), there are color | pairs that go together well. Blue/orange, white/red... There can | be pairs of 2,3,4 or 5 colors. Some colors don't go well together | ie. blue/red. Cue human biology. | | - Fonts are either serif or non-serif. No point in memorizing all | fonts, just browse good font pairs. Usually different fonts for | heading and paragraph makes the contrast easy to achieve. Again | different fonts for different purposes like colors: think happy | birthday font vs lawyer office logo. | | - Best navigation patterns are which are common, not new ones. | | - Anything that is inconsistent should be intentional or it leads | to confusion. ie. differing space between buttons, random font | sizes, different shades of colors, etc. | | - Use inspirations liberally and then pick what you feel will | work for your project, I use dribbble. | | - Colors next to each other look different then alone or other | colors. Brain automatically fills up few things. Think about | optical illusions where one side of box looks brighter or a dress | looks like its different color but both are the same color, but | due to their proximity to other colors make brain interpret them | different. | | - keep in mind how colors work in nature, there is blue ambient | color everywhere even in shadows, sun is at top and that affects | how we see shadows and see things with shadows having depth. | | There is somewhat standardized method to do research, I tried | documenting all artifacts that a UX designer working in corporate | would produce: | | -Define Target Segment | | -User segment matrix (access, value) | | -Observe/Talk/Analyze Figure out how things are | | -Find out possible paint points | | -Experience Map / Journey map | | -Empathy map | | -SWOT analysis | | -Competitive Analysis Features | | -Stakeholder Mapping | | -Analyze and Pick Pain Point | | -WHAT WHO WHERE WHEN | | -FIVE WHYS | | -Crazy 8 | | -Affinity Diagramming | | -Group Critique | | -Scenario Mapping | | -Solution Generation | | -HMW | | -Storyboarding ideas picked from crazy 8 | | -Solo critique | | -Group critique | | -Business Model canvas | | -Value proposition canvas | | -Pick Solution | | -Feasibility vs Impact Chart | | -User Persona | | -Solution Creation | | -Use Cases / User story (as a user..) | | -Feature Brainstorming | | -Must/Could/Should/Wont have | | -User Journey | | -User Flow | | -Card sorting | | -Wireframes | | -Moodboards | | -Brief (goals, criteria, spec, etc) | | -MVP | | -A/B | tuyenhx wrote: | You dont have to read a lot of books about this topic. | | In my exp, I tried a lot of software, then remember what make me | happy when using. | | Apply these designs in practice. Watch other people using, and | improve. Then do the loop. | | Then if you have time, read books later. Practice make more | sense. | wmeredith wrote: | > Watch other people using, and improve. | | This is the critical bit. Build-what-you-like only gets you so | far. | carapace wrote: | Read "Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface | | https://archive.org/details/humaneinterfacen00rask | acarabott wrote: | You don't need to build a product in order to user test. You can | take an existing product, watch a totally new user use it for the | first time, and learn a huge amount. | | I suggest doing this for a type of software that you know really | well, as you'll be more surprised by your own assumptions. | donohoe wrote: | Honestly, I'd work in customer service. I learned so so so much | from interacting with real people. | | Waaaay-back, I got my start ay The New York Times as a customer | service rep (2003?) for the website. I walked people through | password resets, duplicate crossword subscriptions, | cancellations, and even helping them search for articles. Lots of | random interactions. | | It opened my eyes to the ways that UX helps and hinders people, | and sends too easily them in the wrong direction. | | That to me was the best and biggest starting point in UX design; | the first-hand perspectives of others, and empathy. | | The rest can follow after that. | whitepoplar wrote: | Cool! I'd _love_ to know the things you 've learned after | dealing with real people. Can you share some with us? | zichy wrote: | Question yourself every step of the way if you are creating | barriers for anyone. | | To get your started, I recommend this short summary about | universal design, inclusive design, and accessibility: | | https://sayyeah.com/digital-insights/universal-design-access... | tahseen_kakar wrote: | I think the best way to increase your user experience skills is | to be comfortable using design patterns. By learning how to use | them, you will be able to create a consistent experience for your | users, which can make a big difference in their overall | satisfaction. | | Another thing that helped me was studying designers who inspire | me. Just looking at their work and seeing what they've done gave | me ideas for new features and ways of improving my own designs. | | I also invested in my education by taking classes and seminars | about UX design. By doing this, I learned more about industry | best practices and how other people were solving problems similar | to those I encountered at work. | | Deciding on your concentration was an important part of my | education because it helped me focus on what kind of designer I | wanted to become--web UI designer or UX researcher? Once I knew | what type of designer I wanted to be, it helped me set goals for | myself that would help me achieve my dream career goal (e.g., get | hired by Google). | | Implementing your learning is very important as well because if | you don't practice daily then nothing will change! So, after | reading articles about UX design patterns and techniques on | staticBr wrote: | @tahseen_kakar: Thanks for the reply! Are there any classes / | seminars you can recommend? | SkyLemon wrote: | I usually recommend the following to people I work with: | | Practice, but also in all aspects of life, UX - User experience, | is not limited to only the realm of computer interface. | | Learn to paper prototype, by hand, no computer, no rulers, it's | not meant to look pretty, at lest not at first (graphing paper is | recommended). | | Read Norman's design principles | (https://www.educative.io/answers/what-are-normans-design- | pri...). Why because they are short and concise, and a good | starting point, but not necessarily the be all and end all. | (First learn the rules, understand the rules and why they exist, | then if needed break them.) | | Then look at everything in to world, everything at one point had | to be designed. Ask yourself what was the reason. Why did | something get build they way it did. Read up on general design | and look into intent of why something was/is done a certain way. | | Why are milk and eggs at the back of a store? Why are they | together? Look at every door handle, why is it the way it is, | what does it communicate? Sidewalks, roads, crossing, traffic | lights, color usage, shapes, position orientation. Look at | everything around you and work out why it is the way it is. | | Once you catch yourself doing this subconsciously, look at | graphic design, ads, magazines, chose your own adventure books. | (Slightly off topic but a good radio series: | https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence) | | In the end keep in mind, that a lot of design is a response to a | need, Sometime bad design is needed, bad design forms a | presentence, and unless you are willing to retrain every user, | you likely have to follow it... think Qwerty keyboards. | | Good luck! | sumtechguy wrote: | Also keep in mind what each step is doing. Is it clear what to | do? What will happen next? Why am I filling out this form | (again)? Above all _use_ your GUI. Use it yourself. Pretend you | know nothing of the space and is it clear what is going on? | Grab someone and have them use it, do not walk them through it. | Can they get through it without help? Are they getting stuck? | One that has been bugging me for a few years now. If you have | something that is required. Make sure it is marked. Make sure | if they hit next you do not clear out the whole form. | sonofhans wrote: | Ooh, I've been doing nothing but this for 30 years. There's other | good advice in this thread, but my main advice is to pay close | attention to people. UX is just applied psychology. If you | understand humans well enough then you can create good solutions | for them. It's not surprising -- you won't create a good cat toy | if you don't understand cats. | | 1. Keep learning how humans use software. This is rooted in our | physiology, psychology, and culture. It's remarkably sticky | across different contexts, and it's learnable. Watch people using | software; get them to talk about what they're doing. You can do | this in a lightweight way with coworkers -- "Will you show me how | you do X?" Then pay close attention and ask questions. | | 2. Prioritize task context and workflow. For the most part, UI | design is not nearly as important as workflow. How does a user | get from where they are to a solution? Whatever solution you | design must meet the user where they are, where they have the | problem. So be very sensitive to user context -- as you watch | people use software, pay attention to where they start, and what | expectations they bring with them. | | 3. Document and maintain concrete goals for all design work. | Before you design, write down a small list of goals in the user's | own language. "User stories," we often call these. As you work, | keep going back to that list to make sure that you're staying | focused on what users really need, rather than what you think is | cool. As you use new software, try to reverse engineer this list | of goals -- "What were the designers thinking? What did they | expect me to do here?" | | 4. Check your ego, and learn to love being wrong. Put unfinished | work in front of people. Cheerfully accept all feedback without | explaining or defending. Always expect that your design solutions | are not good enough, and can only be improved by testing them | with real humans. You are not your user; you must position | yourself to be surprised by them, and to react well to that | surprise. | mmcdermott wrote: | There are days where I would (somewhat tongue in cheek) say | that UX is more anthropology than psychology. | Wistar wrote: | At Microsoft, I can recall several UX/UI user studies that | were conducted by two anthropologists. Although I don't | recall exactly the studies, I know they had to do with future | UI/UX concepts. | sonofhans wrote: | Fucking feels like that sometimes, eh? :D You're right, | though! The high end of this is something we rarely approach | in software -- an observer with a clipboard, sitting in a | duck blind in someone's living room for a week, watching them | watch TV. | | If you do this right you know your users better than they | know themselves. I used to think that was a bullshit turn of | phrase, but now I believe it completely. I frequently notice | things about people and their work that they've never noticed | before. There's a real skill to "close observation from a | distance." | mattferderer wrote: | 1 & 4 go together very well. The biggest mistake I have | witnessed, is a person putting work into a design until they | thought it was "perfect/finished/happy with it" & were ready to | show off. | | They're going in expecting people to tell them how good their | UX is, even if they won't admit it. As soon as someone | struggles with it, you can see the original designer getting | defensive or suggesting to the person testing to try it the way | the designer intended. | | I think a tool like Microsoft Excel is a great thought process | for UX. I'm not saying it's perfect. But you have a product | with such a wide audience experience range. You want it to be | simple enough to get started with no experience & think of | yourself as proficient enough to throw on your resume. Yet you | also want advanced users to be able to improve their | productivity with slightly hidden UX. | btbuildem wrote: | Context and workflow, 1000x | [deleted] | sneusse wrote: | This. Well, minus point 3 or include the user feedback in your | goals. Also keep in mind that most people cannot articulate | what they really want but most of the time they will complain | about a bad solution. | | Also try to mimic the other applications your clients are using | regularly - even when the UX is bad. It's easier for them to | remember one broken workflow than multiple. | stayux wrote: | A little aside. In early 2000, the problem was how to introduce | and educate businesses about UCD and UX design processes. | Nowadays, in my personal view, we have to balance all the UX/UI | trends/principles/research with business goals more. Starting | with well-defined set of product requirements and KPIs and | "keeping it in focus" is essential. | adam_ellsworth wrote: | Great context! Do you have any books you can recommend to | become better at thinking/working in these ways? | sonofhans wrote: | "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman is excellent; | he originally called it "The Psychology of Everyday Things," | but it kept getting misshelved. "Don't Make Me Think" by | Steve Krug is also very good. Neither of these is a | specialist's tome. | | "Mental Models" by Indi Young is good, one level deeper, | mostly about humans. "About Face" by Alan Cooper is very | thorough on the practitioner side, more of a college | textbook, with lots of examples and pedagogy. | niccl wrote: | Also look at Nielsen Norman Group | (https://www.nngroup.com). The 'Norman' is the Don Norman | who wrote the book, and NNG have a bunch of research that | you can look at. | steve_adams_86 wrote: | This is great. Everything I could think of and more. | | All of my years dealing with UX, the best work I've done has | been when I think less of what I believe, what I want, what I | think is right; it's not about that. It's entirely about the | people you're building for. They aren't users, they aren't | UUIDs in a database, they're human beings. | | I started my career fairly sure that I knew what I was doing | and I knew how to solve problems. I was totally incorrect. | People solve the problem for you, but you have to watch and | listen. You can fill in gaps and use intuition here and there, | but for the most part, you're working in the interest of the | people you build for. They aren't using what you build in the | interest of proving your sensibilities. | sonofhans wrote: | > People solve the problem for you, but you have to watch and | listen. | | I love this. It reminds me of my favorite saying about | design: "People don't design ships. The ocean designs ships." | | At work I try always to say "human" rather than "user," for | just the reasons you state. Like you, I think I've done my | best work when I've been able to remove myself from the | equation. It's one reason I like building software that I'll | never use myself -- it keeps reminding me that I'm not my | customer. | blackRust wrote: | Personally, I found this book very useful and straightforward. It | is written by the creators of Tailwind CSS. | | https://www.refactoringui.com | vladstudio wrote: | Lots of great comments here. I'd like to add something | unexpected: story-telling (or, creative writing). | | An interface is a story. Even better, an interactive story. | | P.S. I also found that it helps a lot if you read the copy aloud | when designing it. | game_the0ry wrote: | Call me stupid, but I just pick a really good css framework and | either try to copy and / or learn from it. | | Tech companies with great engineers and designers have given away | these for free. I try to stand on their shoulders. | jaredlt wrote: | I loved the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug | | Sort, simple and insightful. | | https://sensible.com/dont-make-me-think/ | occz wrote: | UX is merely the functional side of designing things, and the | best resources to help me understand that has been: | | - The book The Design of Everyday Things - The podcast 99% | Invisible | jrockway wrote: | This is not great advice, but I try to make sure I only write | software that I use. That way if something is painful to me, I | know people that didn't write the code have no chance of being | able to use it, so it has to change. | | Certainly, in a software engineer's career, you'll often be asked | to make things that are not directly useful to you. Force | yourself to use them anyway, or you miss that valuable path of | getting feedback -- "do I even like it?" If you made it and you | don't like it, it's probably not good. | | I think this, in general, does yield pretty good results. I think | software engineers have much better work tools than other | engineers (Emacs is a lot nicer than Solidworks), and that's | because you use the tools you make to develop the tools you're | making, and get a lot of experience in what it's like to be a | user. | mcjiggerlog wrote: | Honestly, like with most skills, practice. Build lots of | interfaces and complex interactions and you will get better at it | over time. | swyx wrote: | study and compile every bit of advice that people hand out and | make it easy to retrieve on demand: | | https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy | stephencoyner wrote: | There's many things you can do outside of work that others have | suggested. | | In terms of making your UX skills better, try doing some UX work | and ensure you have a complete story. | | Share a crisp problem you're solving that's focused in scope. | Share an audit of similar experiences that inspired you (they | shouldn't just be competitors). Share insights that you gained | from that audit. | | Then after all of this, share your mock-ups and reinforce them | with how and why you landed there. | | Overtime, you will start to get really good at thinking of | parallel experiences that will inspire your work. | | As a designer, I've found all teams to be really receptive to | this process (especially eng that can review those audited | experiences and agree or disagree with your points). | | Edit: this should be obvious, but talk to your users as often as | you can and always ask why to get to the heart of their points | layer8 wrote: | In addition to what others have already mentioned, a lot can be | learned from the old(!) Windows and OS X user interface design | guidelines: | | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/guide... | | https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/189487 | GuB-42 wrote: | For me, Windows 7 is the peak in terms of UI/UX. It has been | refined over many years, and it was close to perfect, so much | that between later versions, nothing changed much. In Windows | 7, changes were mostly cosmetic, taking advantage of modern | graphics hardware and it was good. So it is certainly a good | guide. | | Windows 8 broke everything and we still havent recovered. I | blame mobile devices, as designers now try to offer a similar | experience on mobile and desktop devices, which is a good | thing, except it is almost impossible to do well. | | I don't know much about the Apple ecosystem, I am sure it is | great, but did they survive the mobile apocalypse and managed | not to mess things up? | spaetzleesser wrote: | I am not a UX guy but I feel a lot of them could benefit from | trying to understand their users and what the tool is actually | used for. I feel a lot of them have a "I know better" attitude | and don't respect their users. | windows2020 wrote: | I believe most concepts, like UX, can be broken down into | multiple pieces, each of which can be described on a spectrum. | | On the right side, we may find: * consistency | * metaphorical * discoverability * ease of access | * attention to detail | | On the left side, we'd find the opposite. | | Where to be on the spectrum depends on context. For example, a | sales page need not be as concerned with consistency as an | application. | | Being conscious of the existence of these concepts is key. | Example: what does '...' mean in many applications? If you don't | know, did you subconsciously? | | And don't forget, design is partially subjective, however, a | decision may be objectively inconsistent, un-metaphorical, etc. | bitwize wrote: | Trying ideas out with an expert in the field. Listening to their | criticism. When they, or someone else, is confused by the | operation of my work, understand that it could be a UI fail and | make efforts to make clearer the communication between | application and user. Above all else -- practice. | | Being a good UI designer is like being a good writer -- your job | is to communicate all that your audience needs to know, without | overwhelming, confusing, or distracting them. A balance needs to | be struck. What, in any given moment, does the user need to know? | How do you arrange that information so that it's clear? How do | you present the different choices to proceed to the user? It | really boils down to, if the user knows at a glance what the | situation is and what they can do next, you'll be fine. | freedomben wrote: | The best thing I ever did was just sit and watch people use my | software. You can get very deep into theory and psychology, and | that stuff is fun and useful, but at the end of the day I got | learned more ROI on my time from watching people use my software | than anything else I did. Ideally, you're just a fly on the wall, | but even if you aren't it's still a useful data source. | orthecreedence wrote: | > What helped you increase your UX skills? | | Disclosure: not a professional designer/UX person but have | learned a lot over the years. | | Honestly, building things that were terrible (not on purpose) and | going back later and trying to pick apart what I did wrong. User | feedback is really important here. Things like "how do I do..." | or "where is the button to..." are signals that your UX needs | improvement. I think it's useful to be able to look at your work | with a critical eye. Of course, if you have the ability, show the | things you build to a designer and ask them for honest critique. | | Put yourself into the shoes of a user and work backwards from | there. When I first started doing UI/UX, I put myself in the | shoes of a programmer and worked towards the design. This will | not ever work. Come at it from the perspective of "if I were to | use this app, what are the most useful features and how do I | access them?" Work backwards from there and have your UI/UX | inform your architecture. Not the other way around. | | Also, one thing that has helped me is to not get too wrapped up | in design trends. It's a distraction from developing a solid | foundation. You can have a great UX that people like without | having to do the LATEST thing. | | One last thing: it can be good UX without being beautiful. To me, | UX is about discovery: can people figure out how to use it | without consulting the manual? If so, it's good UX. The design | might be trashy and look 90s but that's less important than | having something people are comfortable using. | stayux wrote: | Start with the fundamentals. I have published on my blog | introduction series of articles for beginners (don't subscribe, | it is not necessary). | | https://stayux.substack.com/s/ux-design | | UX is a deep topic. But from software-developer perspective you | must cover the basics (if you choose so). | | My book recommendation list: Laws of UX: Using Psychology to | Design Better Products & Services | | https://www.amazon.com/Laws-UX-Psychology-Products-Services/... | | Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful | Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers | | https://www.amazon.com/Think-First-No-Nonsense-Successful-Ex... | | About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design | | https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des... | | I hope this helps, good luck:) | rad_gruchalski wrote: | When I worked for a company selling aircraft spares, I was | talking to my users every day. Everyone: from MD, though the call | center, all the way to the warehouse. | | Seeing how they want to work and listening to what issues they | had helped me "get into their shoes", thus make the software work | the way they wanted it to work. | kareemm wrote: | Some light theory and heavy practice is the best way to improve. | Credentials: been doing UX work for 25 years and I run | https://www.TrialToPaid.com where I'm well paid to improve UX to | grow trial conversion revenue. | | Here are three steps you can take: | | 1. Read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, User Interface Design | for Programmers by Joel Spolsky, Refactoring UI, and (optionally) | The Design of Everyday Things (this will get you paying attention | to UX and UI in the real world). The core principal of good UX is | Spolsky's maxim: "A user interface is well-designed when the | program behaves exactly how the user thought it would." | | 2. After reading, go do 10 hallway usability tests on an | interface you know well. | | 3. Then redesign the interface using the principles from #1 and | run usability tests on that. Later, rinse, repeat. | | The main idea here is: | | 1. Get some decent grounding | | 2. Learn from where users stumble over an interface | | 3. Try and improve the interface | | 4. Get feedback on your improvements (did they help? what other | problems did they cause?) | shockleyje wrote: | Your site is down buddy | xupybd wrote: | Yeah it's not a great user experience currently. I think the | problem is a typo. There is a website without the www that | works. | | http://trialtopaid.com | | It's an instant redirect to another domain. | asdjfhjlaksdhf wrote: | links broke | hoofhearted wrote: | https://tailwindui.com/components | pramodbiligiri wrote: | It partly depends on where your skills are at, currently. | "Refactoring UI" (the book and their videos) turned out to be a | great resource for me when I read it. "Don't Make Me Think" as | well. | | A couple of the recent older threads on this: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29428533 and | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932020 | will5421 wrote: | Make something, then forget about it until you need to use it. | Forgetting is the important part. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I consider usability to be a critical component of "UX." | | I started by reading _The Design of Everyday Things_. It 's a | book that changed my life. There was just a thread, hereabouts, | about the book[0]. | | I also took a few classes with the company that Don Norman co- | owns (NNG)[1]. These are useful, but not a "philosopher's stone." | They tend to push user group testing a lot, and I'm not a huge | fan of UG testing. | | I tend to lean on the platform standards, a lot. As I develop | Apple software, that's easy. Apple has a very heavy-duty | tradition of UI[2]. It's not perfect, but I keep on tossing out | my fancy custom UI, in favor of the built-in UI. | | They did a hell of a lot of work, so I don't have to. I usually | regret "taking the road less traveled by."[3] | | I strongly suggest getting familiar with the built-in UI for | whichever platform/industry you are working with. Look at ISO | icons[4]. | | Being "unique" is not always a good thing. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32135115 | | [1] https://www.nngroup.com | | [2] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- | guideline... | | [3] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most- | travel... | | [4] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search | NKosmatos wrote: | Came here to recommend the NN group. Plenty of free resources, | guides and studies from the "godfathers" of UI/UX design :-) | hyperman1 wrote: | Give your program to a real user. Ask them to do a task. Shut up, | look, and watch 'm squirm. Keep up for an hour. If you start | assuming this particular user must be braindead and failed basic | logic, repeat with a new real user until the lesson sinks in. | Realize your crystal-clear design has in fact plenty of holes, | and user will curse your name if you release now. Bang head | against wall for therapeutic value (your head, not theirs). | Congrats, you're now an UX expert. | | I did it once. Turned out my understanding of the real core | problem was deeply flawed. | | UPDATE: Maybe interesting to give some details of this. I was | developing a program everybody called the calendar. Basically | there's a list of people, and they need to have a timeslot each | somewhere in the next year. Customer was the people who scheduled | these time slots. | | First version of the calendar app was ... a calendar. Columns | monday tuesday wednesday ..., rows with hours and minutes. Drag a | person on top of it and presto. You know the drill. | | Testing with users revealed something was off. No user could | really tell what was wrong, it looked exactly as they had asked, | but everybody agreed this was not it. | | Somehow, the better design dawned: Even if they called it a | calender, they wanted a task list. Not the date/time aspect but | the person aspect was central and required most screen estate. | They needed to be able to select the right people in the right | order, giving priority to some people but also being sure nobody | was forgotten. Date/time selection could generally be automated | or needed a simple text field so they could quickly type it in. | | The redesign took about a day. All the business logic and most of | the UI widgets could be recycled. Just had to add a dumb list | with checkboxes. Nevertheless, it looked completely different | when finished, with widgets moved between pages and resized as | their importance grew or shrunk. I kept a calendar widget in | there out of some kind of residual guilt, but it was almost | completely ignored. | mgkimsal wrote: | > Realize your crystal-clear design has in fact plenty of | holes, and user will curse your name if you release now | | If you're a designer working with some web folks... don't be | too proud to take their feedback as well. I've lost count of | how many times I was given a set of mockups that were | confusing. When I raised the point of "this is confusing to me | - I don't understand X"... _sometimes_ it 's taken to heart and | we converse and iterate. _Sometimes_ it 's not, and I'm pushed | to "just do it like this", which _almost_ always leads to ... a | big delay in getting the exact same "this is confusing" | feedback from people weeks or months later. | | To be fair, this hasn't happened to me _as much_ in the last... | 3-5 years. And there are times I really _do not know_ the | domain very well. What 's confusing to me is 'industry | standard' (labels/names/workflow/etc) - sometimes there's even | regulatory reasons for doing things a certain way. I learn from | that. | | The other side of that is... I've worked on systems for | 6-12-18+ months, and know how the system is currently providing | value. "Designer X" coming in and making radical changes | without any ability to give them feedback - at any stage of the | game - is just really bad. | | If someone has more experience in X, and tells you "this is | confusing/wrong", they _might_ just be correct, and everyone | can save a lot of time by addressing the confusion earlier | rather than later. | | > Even if they called it a calender, they wanted a task list. | | I've hit this exact one a few times, from both angles. Wanting | a task list, but calling it 'calendar', and wanting a calendar | view, but using "schedule". Takes some digging and sometimes | side by side comparisons of 2 or 3 different visualizations, | but eventually we get there :) | hyperman1 wrote: | Maybe another fun example: Data entry. The state has some | official paper form, people want to type it in the computer. So | I created a page with fields in a reasonable order: First | identification, then contact info, then the different aspects | forming the purpose of the form. | | One day, I manage to acquire an actual form as provided by the | state. It turns out to be organically grown and the resulting | field order made no sense at all. The first field was a phone | number, for some reason. Name and surname were actually on 2 | different pages, with lots of stuff in between. No idea how it | got so messed up. | | So I ordered the fields in my form in the same bad order as the | state form. Users loved it. The could just tab-tab-tab quickly | fill it in. | [deleted] | zafka wrote: | I think all developers hardware and software should read "Design | for Everyday Living" <SP> https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday- | Things-Revised-Expand... | feral wrote: | Zafka seems to be recommending "The Design of Everyday Things" | here, from that link which appears mangled to me. (looks like | there are many books with similar names!) | palmm wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things | | The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman | jasfi wrote: | Good tools help a lot, by that I mean frameworks and libraries, | e.g. for CSS. | cpursley wrote: | I've gotten a lot of mileage out of following Victor Ponamariov: | | - https://user-interface.io | | - https://hundred.user-interface.io <- this is especially good | | - https://twitter.com/vponamariov <- he often has great threads | interleave wrote: | In the past 2 years I learned to conduct and analyse in-depth | interviews in the health-care sector. | | My goal was 100 interviews. To get a hang of it. I finished my | 300th interview recently. | | For me, as a software developer, there is nothing harder and more | valuable than those conversations. | labratmatt wrote: | Tell yourself and others that you're and empath and that you're | human-centered. Seek out like minds and converse with them about | interfaces. Do it lots - for years. | throwaway0asd wrote: | I learned CSS working email before and after the release of IE7. | IE7 had a completely different box model than IE6 and email is | incredibly primitive and unforgiving. Webmail is even worse. | | I learned JavaScript when I was involuntarily reassigned from a | design job to a developer job. I just had to figure it out. I | learned to write code in an imperative functional way because I | didn't have prior bad practices and I didn't want a bunch of | vanity decoration. | | Lately I have been maintaining an OS GUI in the browser. It | turned out to be easier and faster without a framework. Less is | more when there are many moving parts and competing concerns. | What helped me the most with this is good test automation against | user events in the browser. I was able to write my own tool to do | this and so long as the page was served from localhost I didn't | have to mess with the complexities of CDP. | efortis wrote: | For business apps, make an effort to become a domain expert and | user/operator on their subject and focus on making UIs easy to | use, as opposed to easy learn and difficult to use. | | "...if we were focused on making everything easy to learn, rather | than easy to use, we would all be riding tricycles. The bicycle | is harder to learn to ride, but much more powerful." | | - Douglas Engelbart | eternityforest wrote: | I try to think UI-first. When I start a project it's not "How do | I implement this functionality" it's "How do I make this UI". | | UX is a lot deeper than where the buttons go, it's about | workflow, and architectural decisions can constrain UI. Using a | UNIXy suite type model? You might have trouble editing an earlier | decision without undoing all work after that, unless you are very | careful. | | Some architectures might make auto discovery and drop boxes hard | and users will need to type IP addresses themselves. I'm | convinced a top notch UI has to be a goal from the start, or it | will take twice the work. | | Good UX means the actual functionality is designed based on the | psychology of the users, not the logic of the task. An undo | button is worth more than beautiful code. 2 redundant buttons | that do almost the same thing, that could just as well be done by | manually entering parameters, is fine if that's what users want | and it will save time and stop mistakes. | | You're not modeling a task, you're modeling how a user does a | task. | | Next up, white space. It really is important. Packing 200k things | on screen will annoy everyone. Modern UI design might disappoint | some in terms of aesthetics, many people hate the ultraminimal | look, but the layout is pretty good and paying attention to how | everyone else does it makes sense. | | When was the last time you needed a manual or google to use an | Android app? Almost never for me, because they are self | documenting and things just work. | r_hoods_ghost wrote: | Packing 200k things on screen will annoy everyone... except | power users (not literally 200k things obviously). | | If you're building a specialist, usually business, application | then often all the users will be power users fairly quickly, | because they will spend all day every day in your application. | In this case their priority will be doing things quickly and | accurately, and having all the information they need available | when they need it. My priority as a UX designer in this | instance (or my priority as a designer herder these days) | should be enabling them to do this, and not making stuff look | pretty and well spaced in the first instance. This will often | involve cramming lots of information and icons into a small | space and minimising white space, and will sometimes involve | making an application hard to use for newcomers. And that's | fine! If it is a bit of software that someone is going to be | using 40 hours a week for the next 10 years then the priority | is the user who already knows the system, and not the user who | is learning the system. Although you need to ensure that the | system is actually learnable, which is largely about | consistency, documentation (gasp!) and tutorials, and surfacing | the most frequently performed actions. | | I just went through a battle with a UI designer who wanted to | break up an existing interface used in a marking tool into | several screens because the current UI was hugely cluttered | (which it is) and intimidating (yep, looks scary) and hard to | learn (actually not, onboarding of a new user takes about 30 | minutes. 25 of which is them following a long to a video). The | design they came up with would have looked much nicer, but | would have resulted in a much poorer UX, as it would have | involved the assessor switching between multiple tabs, | scrolling up and down and dragging and dropping items across | the screen. And doing this literally thousands of times over | the course of a couple of weeks. I'd already been through a | similar battle with a previous UI designer to eliminate drag | and drop in the same interface a couple of years ago because I | had a user develop RSI using it. In doing so I made the I | terrace uglier and more cluttered but eliminated many hundreds | of drag and drop actions a day for each user. | | Anyway, moral of the story, sometimes a good UX is only | possible if you have a "bad" or at least ugly and cluttered UI. | This doesn't mean that you should ignore aesthetics, or go out | of your way to make things ugly, but that sometimes cluttered, | information dense and unintuitive to new users is the way to | go. | nicbou wrote: | > I try to think UI-first | | I think of the problem first. We often go straight to the | solution without a clear understanding of the problem. | | Sometimes, the problem does not require a UI at all. The | solution is somewhere else. As I was building a UI for someone | to perform a task, I realised that the task could be entirely | automated. I was tackling a problem on the wrong layer. | | I think that you should start by modeling the task, because the | user might not need to do that task in the first place. "How a | user does a task" is how we get faster horses instead of | automobiles. | | > When was the last time you needed a manual | | I suspect that it has a lot to do with growing up using those | devices. Give one of those devices to your grandma and watch | them go. | sbmthakur wrote: | The case-studies by Growth.Design have been pretty helpful. | | https://growth.design/case-studies | dsmmcken wrote: | Exposure. Try a lot of software, like everything you can possibly | get your hands on to play with. Start with your area of interest, | or focus of work, but don't limit yourself to your space. Try as | many applications from as broad of fields as you can. Try to find | something you like about everything you try. Try to articulate | exactly what you like about it. Try to find something you hate | about it. How would you improve that thing you hate? Practice | thinking critically. | | You'll start to collect ideas and make connections of interesting | interaction patterns. Maybe the way they handle a mini-map in a | random GIS software you tried would be perfect for an unrelated | music composing app you are trying to build. Maybe you see a | great settings config in an a 3d texturing program, or a video | game, but it has exactly the range of features you need. | bena wrote: | I'm not a UX developer by trade, but I've had to develop UX in my | time so I've picked up some things. | | It's not about how fast you get to something. | | You talk to users and they will go on and on and on about | "clicks". Anyone talking to you about the number of clicks | doesn't understand UI let alone UX. Making everything "one click" | away is how you get those massive button interfaces. It's just | information overload and even harder to navigate than something | that would take more clicks to navigate. | | Another way to think about this is that a book takes many | "clicks" to write. And a book that was written in one "click" | wouldn't be good to read. Some long books are quick to read and | some short books take forever to read. Flow is way more important | than number of actions. | | Realizing that always shooting for "easier" is a mistake. | | Things must flow. Except where they shouldn't. Sometimes you want | to actually put in resistance. Sometimes you want to make sure | that what a user does is actually what they want to do. You want | them acting with purpose and intention. If something has a large | effect on the system, you want people to not accidentally do | that. The best way to do that is to make it slightly involved. | 1autodev wrote: | 1. Learned ReactJS | | 2. Explored ReactJS component libraries & https://react.rocks/ . | One of my favorites for data table UX: React Bootstrap Table --> | https://react-bootstrap-table.github.io/react-bootstrap-tabl... | | 3. Copied and pasted | | 4. Edited code a little bit | | 5. Things worked | | 6. Finished project(s) | | 7. Breathed sigh(s) of relief ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-20 23:01 UTC)