from Hacker News

Resources for a programmer to learn UI/UX design?

by daviesgeek on 1/18/19, 6:42 PM with 2 comments

My manager has recently asked me to fill in for UI/UX design on my team.

Like most programmers, my design has a tendency to be very functional and not so pretty. I feel I have a decent eye when it comes to actually implementing designs and I am decent at suggesting changes that improve the design and flow of a given page or design.

What I feel I'm lacking is the creativity to actually start designs. I tend to focus too much on the technical side (which, in my defense, has been my job for the last 5+ years) and not so much on the user facing design. I'm guessing I just need practice and I'll be able to learn, but as I said, the starting point is my biggest hurdle at this point.

I'm wondering if anyone has some suggestions for overcoming this? Resources, tips, stories, etc?

  • by baruchvelez on 1/18/19, 8:22 PM

    I'm a front-end developer who studied graphic design. A very important part of UX is app flow and navigating users through your interface in a seamless, graceful way.

    When I was studying UI/UX something that helped me a lot was reading Google Material guidelines. Even if you're not using a Material UI library (like @angular/material), the guideline thoroughly explains what a good UI/UX should feel like, look like, and work.

    Some links: - https://material.io/design/ - https://www.usability.gov/about-us/index.html (this is more for government websites, but still a good source of information) - https://medium.com/@fluidui (FluidUI is an online tool for creating user stories and design prototypes, in their Medium blog they have a vast list of resources and detailed information. - https://theblog.adobe.com/4-golden-rules-ui-design/ (very good read)

    Hope this helps.

    Cheers.