[HN Gopher] The self-taught UI/UX designer roadmap (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
The self-taught UI/UX designer roadmap (2021)
Author : homarp
Score : 246 points
Date : 2022-10-01 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bootcamp.uxdesign.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (bootcamp.uxdesign.cc)
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I feel like it is missing one thing: sit next to users and watch
| them use your software.
| cpeterso wrote:
| An alternative to traditional usability testing: Drunk User
| Testing! Your testers will be a little dumber and a lot more
| honest. :)
|
| https://uxpamagazine.org/boozeability/
| cpursley wrote:
| OpenReplay and Posthog both have session recording for JS apps.
| It's been really insightful (and often painful) watching our
| customers use/struggle with our software.
|
| There's others but those two are open source if you're
| concerned about user privacy.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Posthog's site seems to be down, but thanks for posting
| these. I tried to pitch my company on Fullstory or Hotjar,
| but failed for reasons these options (which I did not find in
| my research, somehow) might address.
| james_impliu wrote:
| (Ironically it might be an ad blocker in your browser
| causing this!)
| snide wrote:
| Read the entire document. There's a big section on research.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I did read the document, it talks about user interviews,
| surveys, testing solutions, etc... But never once the actual
| act of the designers sitting next to users and just observing
| what happens.
| somat wrote:
| I think design as an independent study is a mistake. it should
| always be coupled with underlying system engineering.
|
| When they are decoupled you end up with architects making pretty
| buildings that are hard to build and operate. software that looks
| nice framed on a wall but trips up the casual user and is
| downright painful for the Professional user. and stylish consumer
| goods where the style interferes with the function.
| whiteboardr wrote:
| You nailed all problems with design education in that comment.
|
| Rich Gold's fabulous book "Plenitude" comes to mind.
| cloudking wrote:
| UI = how your product looks and feels
|
| UX = how your product makes users feel
|
| Well designed products have to balance looking nice with not
| frustrating users.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I feel the UI/UX space is so full of zero skill people.
| insightcheck wrote:
| Is this really true, though? It's maybe plausible that people
| can hold positions without doing much, but I was under the
| impression that UI/UX requires a lot of expertise.
|
| From a couple of days ago on HN [1], it's possible to have over
| 1,000 layers on Figma just to create a button [2] and over
| 10,000 layers on an entire website. And that's just for
| creating a design on Figma. Then there is the field of UX
| research to gather data on the design, the sense behind
| choosing colors and typography for UI, a familiarity with
| working with shadows to create a sense of depth on the page,
| and even working with sound and audio for feedback.
|
| I don't even see how it's possible to hold a UI/UX position and
| not do anything, because there are very clear deliverables that
| can be asked for, and a manager can soon tell if a person isn't
| completing the work. It's plausible that low-skill people can
| exist in the field, but I genuinely can't imagine how one could
| stay low-skill yet keep the position.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33013182
|
| [2] https://imgur.com/TodWS0r
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| Design is really important and a genuinely difficult skill.
| Unfortunately UI/UX design is a growth area that is currently
| attracting useless chancers like shit in a honey-and-vinegar
| sauce attracts flies. I feel a bit sorry for chancers because
| it must be a bit grim to know you are useless and have to
| fake it... but not so sorry I will hire one, or treat the one
| hired by someone else as the star they claim to be.
| diordiderot wrote:
| > 1,000 layers on Figma just to create a button
|
| Really proves the no skill point.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 1000 layers for a button is a misleading description of the
| linked image. It's an entire design system for every button
| in an app.
| tpmx wrote:
| It's a bit like with developers. At least 50% are crap.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I really view UI/UX position as an excuse to have "friends"
| around the company.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| You must work for a really mediocre company?
|
| Design makes or breaks a product. Not sure where you got
| the impression that it's useless and professional designers
| gets nothing done.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I am not contesting that UI/UX is incredibly important
| and hard. It's just that 99.99% of the people in that
| profession are clueless.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Are 99.99% of developers clueless?
|
| I'm just trying to understand what makes you think that
| in the field of design, 99.99% of the professionals are
| clueless? What about in the marketers? Are they also
| 99.99% clueless?
|
| Trying to learn how non-designers think of the
| profession/professional designers.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Having worked with an excellent UX designer, specifically
| not a graphic designer, he was great.
|
| The difference between him and the other ones I have run
| into sense, he watched users use the product, he would
| ask users how they might operate low fi paper mock ups,
| before us developers even saw the design. He tried his
| best not to project his own preferences and
| idiosyncrasies on the interaction design.
|
| On the other hand, I have not seen this since. Compared
| to him, in my anecdata 90% are not clueless, but pretty
| bad.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| To add on, he was not some genius, what he did was
| listen.
| tpmx wrote:
| I don't doubt that there are a number of broken companies
| where that is the case. Sorry if you're in such a place :/
| nfw2 wrote:
| I agree that a lot of UI/UX professionals have dubious
| qualifications.
|
| That said, talented designers can arguably be a company's most
| valuable employees. Product design is the axis on which many
| tech companies compete, not technological innovation. Technical
| competency is table stakes.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I hesitate to conclude this but I have a feeling that this is a
| 'wishful sketching' profession for many.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| I was hired on words alone also: I critiqued their design, and
| gave them some tips and guidelines: Hired on the spot. Designed
| part of an app, that was so well liked, it became standard and
| lore.
|
| This article in particular is next level. Even if you know UX,
| even if you are great at UX, this one is good.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Why is it called UI/UX designer?
|
| UX is an umbrella term covering many design disciplines, like
| interaction design, UI design or research.
|
| UI is a subset of UX.
|
| Someone who is good at both interaction design, IA, research and
| UI is nowadays called (digital) product designer.
|
| It's somewhat frustrating that the design industry can't agree to
| use the right terms.
| oxff wrote:
| I think UX designers have already caused enough havoc, we don't
| need more of them
| klysm wrote:
| How do you reconcile this with a lot of software having
| horrible UX? It has real consequences
| linguae wrote:
| Here's my take: in many projects there are design and
| engineering tradeoffs that put the user's needs and interests
| against the company's interests. A simple example would be
| ads. Many websites and software tools rely on ads for
| funding. There are many ways to serve ads with varying
| impacts on the user experience. The challenge is serving the
| ads in a way that brings in acceptable amounts of revenue
| while not alienating users with annoying, intrusive ads that
| drive users to their competitors.
|
| Of course, there are many situations where users can't use
| competing software, or where there is no competitor. This
| leads to resentment, and I believe some of the negative
| sentiment against some UI/UX designers comes from people
| being burned by bad experiences caused by UI/UX being
| optimized for the interests of the company instead of the
| user.
| runarberg wrote:
| What do you mean? Are telling us that a lot of people in the
| UI/UX industry don't have talent? Are you telling us that the
| UI/UX industry is bad? Can you clarify, otherwise a lot of
| people here--that are members of that industry--are gonna
| assume you mean they aren't good at their jobs, and will take
| offense.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Design is a side-effect of making choices. The idea is that you
| get someone to do it who has experience and is thinking very
| hard about it, and testing their assumptions. But the
| alternative is not to have no designer; that is impossible. The
| alternative is just that someone else does the design, usually
| someone who doesn't even know that is what they're doing, let
| alone care.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This guide should definitely include big sections on user
| research, discovery, and validation. These may be left off
| because they are thought of as more "product designer" skills,
| but what if I told you that distinction is meaningless? In
| practice, you'll have to do it even if you don't want to -- but
| you should want to, because it's the way to actually make things
| good.
| runarberg wrote:
| I agree, user research is an invaluable skill of a good UI/UX
| developer. I guess this is a roadmap, not a guide, and the
| author makes a passing mention of it, so I consider that
| sufficient.
|
| As a UI developer, I've never actually learned to conduct user
| research (skill that I'm definitely lacking), but during my
| time in the industry I've definitely learned to listen to my
| graphic designers that actually conduct these research, both to
| listen to and materialize their interpretation, and to bring my
| own interpretation. As a novice UI/UX developer I for sure had
| a lot of biases about user interaction which were deeply
| flawed, UI/UX research is a really helpful tool in braking
| these biases.
| swyx wrote:
| this roadmap is very heavy on theory, and geared towards being a
| professional designer.
|
| if you're like me and are mostly a developer who just wants to
| get incrementally better at design piece by piece, here's the
| roadmap i've been working on for about 3-4 years:
|
| https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/
| ThomPete wrote:
| You teach yourself UI/UX by applying knowledge from outside the
| field through design patterns and trial and error to actual
| projects. Understand the user data adjust according, rinse
| repeat.
|
| Understand business, understand programming sufficiently, learn
| how to understand data, learn how to observe and draw conclusions
| based on behavior, understand typography, color theory.
|
| Avoid anything that says UX theory, design theory, design
| thinking, design psychology etc. Whatever relevance they have,
| it's already baked into the design patterns.
|
| The biggest advice I have is find areas that don't have well
| established design patterns as that will normally be the areas
| you will have the ability to have the biggest impact.
|
| This is my anecdotal +20 years experience making sure I stayed
| relevant.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| That's good advice.
|
| Another one is to put yourself in the user's shoes and then
| lean in to your own laziness in order to come up with a UI that
| will delight the average user.
|
| Also, in the beginning don't worry too much about the
| difficulty of implementing your ideas. You won't come up with
| anything new if you are always thinking "that's too hard" or
| "that will take too long." You can always scale back your
| ambition at a later time, but it's important to be excited
| about your ideas.
|
| There are a few sites that follow this philosophy:
|
| http://flyosity.com/design-then-code/
|
| https://designcode.io/
|
| Edit:
|
| Oh, and start prototyping the flow way before finalizing colors
| and so on. This is a great tool for it:
| https://principleformac.com/
| tpmx wrote:
| I spent a lot of time on UI/UX design between 2004-2014 at Opera,
| the browser company (on the mobile browsers). Finding someone who
| was good enough at pixel level graphics design _and_ was capable
| of iterating like us software people were used to was insanely
| hard, nevermind the complexities of the UI /UX designs.
|
| I think things have gotten a lot better since then. Now it's
| routine to see very well-designed apps (and _sometimes_ even
| websites) from even relatively small national /local entitities
| that _totally nail_ all three main aspects: GFX /UI & UX (well,
| and sometimes even transitions/motion design). It's really
| impressive to see how the field has scaled up. I must assume that
| the various variants of education are working. (Northern European
| context.)
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Can you share some examples of apps from smaller entities that
| you think are well-designed?
| tpmx wrote:
| Scale is relative. I'm impressed by e.g. these Scandinavian
| apps: Postnord (!), Avanza, Hemnet, NRK TV, Instabox. There
| are perhaps 300-400 more of roughly equal quality in
| Scandinavia. For most of these: the maximum adressable
| audience (the population) is 5-10M and they still they reach
| a super high level of polish.
| krembanan wrote:
| I always thought NRK TV was so well done and beautiful,
| glad to find someone else that feels the same way :)
| devteambravo wrote:
| https://skunkworks.ae.studio/
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I'm not seeing anything here that makes me think "this is
| good design", but maybe I'd need to sign up for each
| product. I saw some cute landing pages and some Typeforms.
| Were you directing to me to something specific?
| devteambravo wrote:
| Could you share something that does make you think "this
| is good design"?
| krm01 wrote:
| One thing that helps us (3 person UI UX design team [0]) is to
| learn to code and write code for side projects frequently.
|
| This helped us be more in sync with engineering teams and
| allowed us to seemlessly get plugged into teams of Google
| engineers, Startups etc.
|
| [0] https://fairpixels.pro
| simulo wrote:
| I find coding to be a useful skill when collaborating with
| developers and for writing my own prototypes, but it is not
| very valuable for getting jobs as it is rarely a required
| skill.
| andirk wrote:
| Encourage your designer friends to understand the constraints
| of HTML and CSS. Without that understanding, the ouput from
| the design team often looks more like print media.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Speaking as a former developer, current designer, I agree
| that all designers should have some familiarity with the
| medium they're working in, in addition to the domain they're
| working in. An industrial designer should learn something
| about fabrication and manufacturing, and a software designer
| should learn to code. They don't have to become experts, but
| ignoring such an enormous aspect of your field for your
| entire career would be a missed opportunity. I hesitate to
| call it irresponsible, but to be candid that's personally
| that's how I view it. Call it an invaluable benefit.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I like to say, design without consideration for
| manufacturing is art. In the context of business, design is
| not a tool for doing art.
| samsolomon wrote:
| I think the more overlap in understanding--better delivery
| teams perform. That doesn't mean product designers are
| writing production code or engineers are tweaking designs.
| But it does mean that designers understand limitations and
| consistency, while engineers understand what the general
| experience should feel like. I think that leads to a pretty
| tight feedback loop where things can be iterated on quickly
| and there's not a lot of noise with arguing about what's
| possible or not.
| Mezzie wrote:
| The main problem is that anyone who can do both is highly
| incentivized to go into engineering/coding instead of
| product design. The pay and respect are usually much
| better. So then that pool is limited further to people who
| can design and code well, prefer design, and don't
| need/want extra money.
|
| Then add on to that our current work culture prefers
| specialists to generalists: HR and exec teams will hire a
| product designer with 5 years of design experience and no
| coding over someone with 2 years of design experience _and_
| 5 years of software engineering experience.
| Foreignborn wrote:
| I don't find this to be the case. I'm a senior designer
| at a FAANG and chose this over being a SWE. And nowadays,
| the salaries are very competitive between pm, design and
| eng.
|
| When I was earlier in my career it was a major struggle
| to stop coding. every place out of university would say
| there was some kind of design opportunity for me, but
| then I'd find myself implementing mine and other
| designers features. I'm glad that's over.
|
| Anecdotally, I've met several eng -> PM and Eng -> design
| transfers, probably all possible to the leveling of pay
| and prestige.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I stand corrected! Thanks.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| This applies for most things though. For example, when I
| got hired at my current place, I didn't know anything about
| the domain. The more I've learned about the domain the
| better code I write. Knowing the domain allows me to make
| informed decisions, discover potential issues etc, rather
| than just blindly follow some spec.
| krm01 wrote:
| Exactly this
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Bingo. The most effective PMs / designers / managers I've
| worked with as a software engineer spent their energy
| learning high level technical limitations. What's order-of-
| magnitude easier; what's harder.
|
| It's difficult to learn because it's experience-based
| listening and intuiting, without any books that I know of,
| but it provided a greater boost to team productivity than
| their learning nuts-and-bolts details.
| 12thwonder wrote:
| Most of the UI/UX designers that I see at work and other places
| are basically graphics designers. I just wish UI designers learn
| more about interaction design than just pure graphics design.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The same applies to web design. Using Photoshop to create an
| image that looks like a website doesn't make someone a web
| designer, any more than creating an image that looks like a
| house would make them an architect.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Unfortunately it seems like most staffing departments seem to
| think that this is what UX _is_. Often where you 'd see "web
| designer" or "graphic designer" before, it's been renamed to
| "UX designer" and the emphasis is really on visual appeal or
| ability to toss together web pages etc. rather than on the
| skill of information architecture, usability flows, user
| research etc. For some people there's an overlap in these
| skills, but not for all people.
|
| My wife is trained in UX research and UX/UI design and is
| trying to break back into the job market after years of being
| out (kids, sick mother, school, etc.) and although she had a
| background in some graphic design (and marketing and content)
| years ago, she doesn't feel confident-in or want to emphasise
| on graphic design and doesn't have an up to date portfolio of
| that kind of thing. And what she is finding is almost all the
| positions titled "UX Designer" are really just "web design" or
| "graphic designer" with a fancy new title, and they won't look
| at her, really.
|
| The few times that I've done front end work I've always found
| it frustrating how the UX people I worked with seemed more
| concerned right up-front with pixel padding and font choices
| and colours and animations and logos than with getting the
| initial storyboard and low fidelity mockups right first.
|
| TLDR; most shops hiring "UX designer" are really wanting to
| hire graphic designers and pixel slingers.
|
| P.S. if you know of anybody hiring (remote, full or part time
| or freelance) for UX research, content design, information
| architecture, and so on and who wants a mature and
| conscientious worker with past professional experience in the
| tech sector... ping me at ryan . daum @ gmail.com
| Hnaomyiph wrote:
| It's funny because I went to school for computer science, I
| grew up doing graphic design, and have a lot of experience
| having done a lot of work in both departments, but never a
| strict UI/UX role. When I tried to apply for UI/UX positions I
| either never heard back, or was told time and time again that I
| was lacking specific UI/UX experience.
|
| Thought it was always funny, I guess hiring managers don't see
| the overlap the same way I do.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I took a few elective Human Computer Interaction classes in
| undergrad and grad school. I have never seen a company pay more
| than lip service to doing actual UI design.
|
| I generally work with graphic designers who made the switch to
| calling themselves UI/UX designers because the realized it paid
| more. They're much better than me at understanding composition,
| fonts, colors, visual hierarchy etc..., but they don't know
| much at all about actually designing interactive UI.
|
| In many cases the designers are the first people to work on
| engineering the product and they aren't equipped for this work
| at all.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Conversely, many of the developers I came across in design
| firms were cargo cult coders who got jobs because they very
| confidently presented their mediocre-at-best development
| capabilities as plausible to non-technical people. In fact,
| they likely didn't even know they weren't great because they
| generally completed the simple tasks they were given and the
| people evaluating their work knew less than they did. Not
| knowing enough to a hire and direct qualified staff is a
| management problem, not a problem with the field.
|
| TBH, the overwhelming majority of developers assume they know a
| _lot_ more about UI, UX and visual design work than they
| actually do... I 'm continually shocked by how many think
| bringing in a UX person to add visual polish to an otherwise
| complete product in any way makes sense. In software dev
| environments, they necessarily have a lot of say in who gets
| hired. If you're not clear on who does what in the design
| business, you get people with shiny portfolios of app UI
| screens assembled in Photoshop to do your "UX" if there's
| enough time and budget left for the "extra" sprint.
| gsmo wrote:
| Just to add to this (copied from other branch)
|
| The challenge the profession currently faces is that a lot of
| people go into it for the wrong reasons and who are not suited
| for it. Because there is no money in traditional graphic
| design, many graphic designers elect UX thinking it's nearly a
| 1:1 transfer. There is a lot of mis-match.
|
| You really have to really like and have a good sense of human
| cognition and human factors first and foremost. You also have
| to like thinking in systems. You are basically design
| (engineering) solutions for how humans interact with computing
| in all its forms and in many modes.
|
| Many designers, whether they admit it to themselves or to
| others, would really rather be designing book covers and
| concert posters.
| Mezzie wrote:
| And the people who ARE interested in those get less far
| because we don't have as many shiny things to show off to HR
| to get an interview in the first place.
| umutcnkus wrote:
| Do you think investing to learn UI/UX design worth the effort for
| a frontend developer, besides personel fun?
| astral303 wrote:
| One could write a whole book about great UX using only interfaces
| in ncurses/text mode. (Edited: I missed a section on
| UX/research).
| snide wrote:
| Read the entire document. There's a big section on UX and
| Research.
| [deleted]
| pier25 wrote:
| This is cool but, like anything, practice is far more important
| than theory.
|
| There are tons of websites that give you fake briefings and
| challenges to practice on:
|
| https://uxtools.co/challenges/
|
| https://fakeclients.com/ui
| swyx wrote:
| few more:
|
| - https://www.frontendpractice.com/ - https://www.codewell.cc/
| - https://cssbattle.dev/
|
| my full list https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy
| testcase_delta wrote:
| Thanks for sharing these!
| hizxy wrote:
| This is why we have bad software
| klysm wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| gsmo wrote:
| The challenge the profession currently faces is that a lot of
| people go into it for the wrong reasons and who are not suited
| for it. Because there is no money in traditional graphic
| design, many graphic designers elect UX thinking it's nearly a
| 1:1 transfer. There is a lot of mis-match.
|
| You really have to really like and have a good sense of human
| cognition and human factors first and foremost. You also have
| to like thinking in systems. You are basically design
| (engineering) solutions for how humans interact with computing
| in all its forms and in many modes.
|
| Many designers, whether they admit it to themselves or to
| others, would really rather be designing book covers and
| concert posters.
| 0xb0565e487 wrote:
| I can't read this they want me to sign up, but it looks
| interesting.
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ry2Kc
| [deleted]
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Copywriting is design.
|
| Many of the examples are for web design however not once does it
| talk about copywriting. It goes way under appreciated but
| copywriting is also design (i.e. # of words you write effects UI
| layout in massive ways).
| gopher_space wrote:
| My biggest fear as a developer is that I'm unaware of something
| that's obvious to a domain right next to mine. I love seeing
| people break down their work like in this article, and I wish I
| had a way to add comments like yours to the model and see
| other's thoughts on where and why it fits in.
| partlysean wrote:
| Completely agree. Content Designers should be part of the
| conversation just as early as Product Designers and
| Researchers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Earlier, if you ask me. Content should be an input to design.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > (i.e. # of words you write effects UI layout in massive ways)
|
| Yep. Does anybody work with dedicated copywriters and dedicated
| UI designers who don't do copy? What's the general process?
|
| I find the UI design and copywriting has to be done iteratively
| because they're interdependent and require experimentation to
| find the right balance. For example, sometimes there's a tricky
| layout situation that can be solved by just changing the length
| of the copy. Same goes for development, sometimes it can be
| easier to modify the UI slightly to make it more practical to
| implement e.g. some responsive design coding can get really
| complex if you're not leaning into what the browser lets you do
| easily with flexbox/grid.
|
| Work goes a lot smoother with better results when each team has
| some flexibility and collaborate in an iteratively way vs
| thinking they can handover their part and have it followed
| without any tweaks.
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