An incomplete list of UX design resources
Last updated 17 February 2019
Published in
9 min readFeb 18, 2019
I’m a UX designer. I’m also a design educator, and care deeply about supporting folks who are learning UX design.
As a mentor in DesignLab’s UX Research and Strategy and Interaction Design courses, I find that students are often looking for additional tools and resources to amp up their learning. Over the last few months, I’ve compiled this list of UX resources — including articles, videos, online courses, and communities — in an effort to point students towards some solid, tried-and-true content.
This list is also available here as a Google Doc. Feel free to share, and let me know what you think. This list is ever-evolving and incomplete, and feedback is totally welcome.
For reading, listening, consuming, and learning
Medium Publications
- UX Pin — UX Pin is a product first and foremost, but they also put out some good UX articles.
- UX Collective — solid articles from a variety of UX designers
- Muz.li — design inspiration
- uxdesign.cc — UX Methods, Tools, Books and more
Podcasts
- 99 Percent Invisible — focuses on design and architecture, with some social commentary. Not explicitly focused on digital UX design but definitely touches on aspects on UX design.
- Design + Diversity — tackling the relevant and forgotten issues of diversity and inclusion in the design industry.
- User Defenders — I’ve heard some positive reviews about this but haven’t listened yet.
- Mixed Methods — podcast focused on user research.
- Here’s an article from UX Collective of 5 recommended podcasts
- Another article with UX podcast recommendations
For networking
Slack Communities
- Designer Hangout — huge online UX design community with channels on everything from portfolio critiques to design ethics
- Mixed Methods — user research focused community
- Hexagon UX — UX community for folks who identify as women and/or nonbinary/gender nonconforming
Tools and tricks
General tools
- evernote.design — repository of design links
- UI Goodies — super awesome repository, not just for UI design
- $0 Design Tools to Help You Create Your Next Project
- Top Design Tools — Hack Design Toolkit
- UX Glossary — UX Mastery
- Generally cool UX project checklist tool that encompasses whole UX design process
- General Assembly has a set of free resources on coding, data, design, digital marketing, and product management
Images/photos
- Unsplash — hi-res, open source photo library
- Pixabay — free images
- Boxist — free stock photography
- Pexels
- Moose — stock photos designed to work together
Chrome extensions
- Fontface Ninja — lets you hover over text on pages to find out what font info (font name and size, line spacing)
- Awesome Screenshot — for screenshots and recording screens. especially useful when taking screenshots of long pages that require scrolling
- ColorPick Eyedropper — lets you find rgb/hex values of colors on pages you’re viewing.
- Screencastify — for recording video of screens
- CSSPeeper — Smart CSS viewer tailored for Designers
Free icons
- Noun Project
- Some free icons from InVision
- More free icons from InVision
- Some free icons from UX Pin
- Specky Boy
Sketch-Specific Resources
Sketch templates
- SketchAppSources — free and premium design resources for Sketch users, by Sketch users
Tutorials + tips
- Sketch Together is a solid Sketch tutorial series run by Pablo Stanley.
- LevelUpTuts is also a pretty good beginner’s tutorial. Some tutorials are paid but most are free. Also available on YouTube.
- Essential Sketch Plugins for Designers and Developers from Design + Code
- 10 Tips & Best Practices for SketchApp from UX Pin
- LEARN SKETCH™ from Freebies — a collection of entirely free design resources for Sketch such as UI Kits, Icons, Vector Mockups, and Tutorial Resources
- Sketch Resources from Creative Market
- Typography in Sketch 3: Linked Text Styles
- 7 Tips for Sketch Users — Nick Woodman — Medium
Conducting user research
Survey Design
- Better User Research Through Surveys — video on YouTube
- Most useful survey questions for user research? — a thread from Stack Exchange
Likert Scale Questions
- When and how to use Likert scale survey questions — from SurveyMonkey
- When is it okay not to use “middle” or “neutral” option for Likert scale? — a discussion thread
- Likert Scale — Definition, Examples & 53 Sample Questions You Can Use
User Interviews
Contextual Inquiry
- Contextual Interviews and How to Handle Them
- Tips on conducting contextual inquiry — from Teena Singh
- Why Are Contextual Inquiries So Difficult? — from UX Matters
- Introduction to UX Research: Fundamentals of Contextual Inquiry
- The Dos And Don’ts Of Diary Studies by Erietta Sapounakis
Diary Studies
Some tools
- Optimal Workshop — for conducting and analyzing research (+ usability testing)
- Wonder — I’ve never used this but it came recommended
Synthesizing research findings
Personas
- Article on designing for the multifaceted user — I’ve created/used the “dimension” spectra (shown in the middle of the article) and like them a lot as complements to personas/empathy maps
- Prioritization matrices — can customize for factors like types of target audiences
- Weighting product features by personas — I haven’t tried this approach, but think it’s worth exploring
- Another article on prioritizing personas — Prioritizing personas like this is a controversial practice in my opinion, because it relies too heavily on single factors like the total population of a particular persona, or the power and influence of a particular persona. this can result in patterns like designing for the wealthiest or most connected users, which has social ramifications…it depends on the scenario, as with anything.
Empathy Maps
Competitive Analyses
Heuristic Evaluation / Usability
- Introduction to Usability — article that covers some attributes that help define the usability of a product/service
Design strategy
Product Requirements
- “The Beginner’s Guide to Capturing UX Requirements” — article by Jerry Cao
- “How to Write a Painless Product Requirements Document” — another article by Jerry Cao
Interaction design
General intros to interaction design
- What is Interaction Design? — an article from the Interaction Design Foundation
- The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Interaction Design
What is information architecture (IA?)
- Information Architecture Basics for Designers — from UX Planet
- A Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture for UX Designers — from Adobe
- Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture
- Building the Future: The History of Information Architecture
Card Sorting
Site maps
User flows
- UX Glossary: Task Flows, User Flows, Flowcharts and some new-ish stuff — super popular article about the differences between task flows and user flows
- User Journey Maps or User Flows, what to do first?
- User Flow Diagram Template Sketch freebie — from Sketch App Sources
Some tools
- Timblee — for site maps and user flows
- Whimsical — for user flows. I LOVE WHIMSICAL. (more on that in a future article.)
- RealTimeBoard — for card sorting
- Mural.co — for remote collaboration, card sorting, ideation, designing flows, etc.
- Framer — popular interaction design tool
- GlooMaps — visual sitemap tool
Ideation
Point of View (POV) Statements and How Might We (HMW) Questions
- Worksheet: generating Point of View statements
- Worksheet: generating How Might We questions
- Sample HMW questions from the Stanford d.School
- Additional levers for generating HMW questions from Stanford
Wireframing + prototyping
Some tools
- Invision — powerful tool to make wireframes into prototypes
- Marvel — another prototyping tool
- Figma — wireframing + prototyping tool
- Flinto for Mac — prototyping tool
Sketching
Guidelines
- Google’s Material Design Guidelines for designing for Android/Google products
- Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for designing for Mac/iOS products
Responsive Design
- Responsive Design bookmarklet — cool tool from Benjamin Keen to check for design responsiveness
- Am I Responsive? — another tool to check the responsiveness of websites
- Responsive Web Design Patterns from Brad Frost
Grid Layouts
- A Quick Look at Types of Grids for Creating Professional Designs
- Google’s Material Design guidelines on responsive design + grid layout — the whole doc is pretty useful for understanding some common industry guidelines
UI Pattern Libraries
- UI Garage
- uipatterns.io
- ui-patterns.com
- mobile-patterns.com
- pttrns
- Useful Sources for Design Patterns and Wireframes Guides
- The Design Pattern & Wireframe Libraries Guide
- UX Archive
- UI Movement — library specifically for UI motion and animation
- Design Patterns for Mental Health — pattern library for digital mental health services.
Form fields — UI best practices:
- Designing More Efficient Forms: Structure, Inputs, Labels and Actions — by Nick Babich
- Designing more efficient forms — from Salesforce
- The 18 must do principles in form design
- Designing UX: Forms
Testing
Usability testing 101
- Brief Guide to Testing Mobile Interfaces
- Beginner’s Guide to Usability Testing
- Novice Designer’s Guide to Usability Testing
Some tools
- Verify
- Usability Hub — platform for conducting and analyzing various usability tests
Visual + UI design
Colors
- COLOURLovers — Color Trends + Palettes
- ColorSchemer — Instant Color Schemes
- ColorMunki
- Color Wheel Pro: Classic Color Schemes
- 10 Super Useful Tools for Choosing the Right Color Palette — Web Design Ledger
- Cymbolism — “a tool that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect.”
- Colorable
- Coolors.co — color palette generator
- Adobe Color CC — solid tool for generating five-color palettes
Fonts
- The Ultimate Collection of Google Font Pairings
- Fontjoy — font pairing generator
- Fontbase — a font management tool
Style Tiles
Social implications of design
UX Design, Accessibility, and Inclusion
- 28 Days of Black Designers — The 28 Days of Black Designers project is a design project that focuses on the stories and work of African American / Black designers.
- Latinxs Who Design — Latinxs Who Design is a living directory of thriving Latinxs in the design industry.
- Tatiana Mac has a great introductory class on making design more accessible, with a specific focus on style guides.
- Kat Holmes, Director of User Experience Design at Google, has some interesting work on designing for inclusivity. This is a brief talk she gave a few years ago on inclusive/universal design.
- Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Toolkit (PDF) — various resources on how to think about and practice inclusive design.
- Stark (for Sketch users) — plugin to check contrast and visual accessibility
- Sim Daltonism (for Mac users) — app to check contrast and visual accessibility
- WebAim Color Contrast Checker
Design + Social Impact; Design + Equity
- Greater Good Studio in Chicago has this great Pinterest board of people and groups doing work at the intersections of design and social impact.
- Creative Reaction Lab’s Equity-Centered Community Design Field Guide — pocket sized field guide for how to design with, not for, people, with a specific focus on deconstructing power and designing for racial equity (free downloadable PDF + print copies available for purchase)
- An Incomplete List of Resources for the Equity-Centered Designer by Isabelle Yisak
- The Designer’s Guide to Accessibility Research is a resource itself, but also includes links to a number of great resources.
Career stuff
Practicing design challenges/briefs
Designing case studies and portfolios
- How to write a great UX case study by Karina Daukaeva
- How to structure your first UX design portfolio by Geunbae Lee
- How to write the beginning of your case study
- Ultimate guide to UX portfolio copywriting
See a resource on this list you really like? See a list we should get rid of? Think of something we should add? Reach out with a comment below!
about erika harano
erika harano (she/they) uses design co-create a more just, interconnected, and inclusive world. erika is an independent designer, design educator, & strategist who works with individuals & teams looking to reshape design.
erika is a co-founder of next world teams, an emerging worker cooperative focusing on shifting power, transforming systems, and building community.
check out erika’s work + offerings on their portfolio and follow them on instagram here. get in touch if you’re interested in working with erika for design coaching.
