Reddit reviews The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
We found 67 Reddit comments about The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Basic Books AZ
Here's my list of the classics:
General Computing
Computer Science
Software Development
Case Studies
Employment
Language-Specific
C
Python
C#
C++
Java
Linux Shell Scripts
Web Development
Ruby and Rails
Assembly
I'm not familiar with anything current but I'm sure it exists. When I was doing the bulk of my learning we were still carving holes in strips of cardboard to produce code. Someone younger would probably give better, more current advice.
In general, refining your problem solving skills involves a great deal of introspection. Everything you complete you should go back and analyze the stumbles you had along the way. What caused delays, what produced bugs, what just didn't work very well. Look at these things and try to determine what you could have done differently. No better teacher than failure.
Two very old books that got me started: Aha: Gotcha and Aha:Insight. They are amazing puzzle books written by the master of puzzles, Martin Gardner. They have a bit of a math slant, but not too much. Read the reviews to see if it floats your boat.
Math, imo, is the basis of solid problem solving. It's the reason we learn math from pre-K all through university. You're not doing it so you can do calculus at the grocery store, and I've never used a lick of it in my career, but it does teach you how to think in a logical manner, breaking big problems down into little ones.
Another book that had some impact on my career was Design of Everyday Things. Good read for usability.
Well, because of gin, I'm now going to recommend another book: "Design of Everyday Things". This is a longer, drier book, that goes more into the psychology and general patterns of good and bad design, which complements the more specific directions of "Don't Make Me Think".
The best book to read as a developer is The Design of Everyday Things. If every developer read it, the software world would be a better place.
The Design of Everyday Things can be useful to keep things in perspective, particularly if you're interested in working on things that people interact with.
The Design of Everyday Things
For the lazy:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107Most recent version:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Design-Everyday-Things-Expanded/dp/0465050654/
Hey there, I'm a game designer working in AAA and I agree with /u/SuaveZombie that you'll probably be better off with a degree in CS. BUT... don't give up on wanting to be a designer!
 
You should realize that it's not giving up on your dream at all, in fact, it's great advice for how to reach that dream. A designer with an engineering background is going to have a lot more tools at their disposal than one who doesn't.
 
Design is way more than just coming up with a bunch of cool, big ideas. You need to be able to figure out all the details, communicate them clearly to your teammates, and evaluate how well they're working so you can figure out how to make something people will enjoy. In fact, working on a big game often feels like working on a bunch of small games that all connect.
Take your big game idea and start breaking it down into all the pieces that it will need to be complete. For example, GTA has systems for driving and shooting (among many other things). Look at each of those things as its own, smaller game. Even these "small" parts of GTA are actually pretty huge, so try to come up with something as small as possible. Like, super small. Smaller than you think it needs to be. Seriously! You'll eventually be able to make big stuff, but it's not the place to start. Oh, and don't worry if your first game(s) suck. They probably will, and that's fine! The good stuff you make later will be built on the corpses of the small, crappy games you made while you were learning.
 
If you're truly interested in design, you can learn a lot about usability, player psychology, and communication methods without having to shell out $17k for a degree. Same goes for coding (there are tons of free online resources), though a degree will help you get in the door at companies you might be interested in and help provide the structure to keep you going.
 
Here's some books I recommend. Some are specific to games and some aren't, but are relevant for anything where you're designing for someone besides yourself.
 
• Universal Principles of Design
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Rules of Play
• The Art of Game Design This and the one below are great books to start with.
• A Theory of Fun This is a great one to start with.
• Game Feel
• Depending on the type of game you're making, some info on level design would be useful too, but I don't have a specific book to recommend (I've found pieces of many books and articles to be useful). Go play through the developer commentary on Half-Life 2 or Portal for a fun way to get started.
 
Sounds like you're having a tough time, so do your best to keep a positive attitude and keep pushing yourself toward your goals. There's nothing to stop you from learning to make games and starting to make them on your own if that's what you really want to do.
Good luck, work hard!
It's not the advice you are looking for, but I can't stress it enough: design is about problem solving, rather than pure aesthetics.
Sure, making things look pretty is important. However, making your design understandable and easy to use is even more important. It's probably what you should focus on.
You are designing something for real human beings. Your design should solve a real problem in the most elegant way. How? That's something I can't explain in a single comment.
This video series explains it really well. It's not about web applications, but that doesn't matter. The message is the same. You prefer reading? This and this book do an extremely good job of explaining how to design things.
Also, this article explains the point I'm trying to make far better than I ever could. Good luck!
> Le Corbusier was a renowned smart ass but the poor people were not happy in the buildings he designed for them.
There's a great book The Design of Everyday Things that talks about good and bad design in buildings, software and other things we use every day. After reading it, I started noticing a lot more badly designed things around me. Also, increased my appreciation of instances of good design.
If UX and design piques your interests, Design of Everyday Things is a great book on the subject. Even if you don't ever planning on designin anything it gives you perspective to see things around you in new ways.
I'll be graduating this June from U of T after having studied some "Human-Centric Design" processes and applications. So, I've ended up looking at a lot of things in this city as confusing and poorly made. A classic example are the many doors around the city that have handles that convey the meaning of "PULL" but instead only allow a person to physically "PUSH" them open.
These garbage cans were designed more for aesthetics than for actual use. It excluded a segment of our population (the physically disabled) and didn't take into consideration the reality of snow machines and assholes who will stomp on the metal bars - thus breaking them and rendering the entire object as useless.
Plus, their shape were odd in the relation to the sidewalks as they bulged out forcing people to kind of "dance" away from them. When people had to throw something during the rush hour foot traffic their needing to stop and press down on the metal bar created a momentary blockage, which disrupted the flow of people.
The big black metal bins you see now being put can be considered an upgrade simply because the simpler design is much more intuitive to use and simple to replace if damaged.
If you are interested in this kind of thing I highly recommend reading "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman.
You get to see the World in a much different way and even see how some design choices are poorly made in everyday objects we use.
My advice, as a long time UI/UX designer is test early and often on people who have never seen your game. This has been the only way for me to ensure things are improving. Once someone has tested your UI once, they bring that knowledge with them into their next play session, negating any indications of weather or not this is easy to understand and use.
Also, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Billions of dollars have likely been spent trying to solve the very problem you are. Look at what is out there, find the good stuff, and use it as a starting point for your own problems. Shops in particular, have TONS of examples of successful and unsuccessful designs. My primary resource is the hundreds of games I own on steam, and my memories of the best systems I've encountered.
The Design of Everyday Things is about the only book I'd recommend, but it does not focus on UI/UX so much as design as a concept in itself.
I'm just about to graduate with my undergrad in CS with a specialization in HCI, and have had multiple UX internships. Read these two books, they'll provide a really good baseline of knowledge about user-centric design.
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug
While the second one typically focuses more on web, they're both amazing books that should be in the library of any UX/HCI specialist.
The best way to start building a portfolio is to, well, just do. Find anything (not just a program/app, even) that you don't like the design of, and start from there. Try and redesign it to make things easier to figure out. Show it to others to gauge reactions and get feedback. Iterate and improve.
There are a bajillion different programs for UI prototyping, but the first tool I'd suggest is good ol' pencil and paper. Get yourself a sketchbook and keep it in your backpack (or with you in some other capacity) at all times. When you have a design idea, drop everything, make a quick sketch, and go back to what you were doing. Ideas are fleeting and temporary, so it's best to get it on paper before you forget. Once you've got time, try and improve on those designs and think of what would work and what wouldn't. After you're happy (and have shown it to others for feedback), take it into some prototyping app like Balsamiq, Indigo Studio, or Sketch. Render it in high quality and start seeing how users would react to it in its natural setting (put it on a phone, or on a computer, etc. for testing). It's all about getting user feedback because one person on one computer may not have all the right ideas.
tl;dr: Read books. Redesign crappy things. GET A SKETCHBOOK. Feedback, feedback, feedback.
Here's a little list of best-sellers on Amazon and a few from this thread:
If you haven't yet, then The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.
What's true in physical design is true tenfold in UX.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0465050654&pd_rd_r=D705Q3CWE6WPCVYA94P7&pd_rd_w=WBYHj&pd_rd_wg=xga3O&psc=1&refRID=D705Q3CWE6WPCVYA94P7
This is a good start:
The design of everyday things by Don Norman
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654
And depending on what you consider UX you could search for resources that discuss interior design, architecture, environmental design, product design, behavioral economics, nudging etc.
Edit: Link
I wish I did, but any good design book (think The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman) should mix in elements of how the human psyche interacts with good and bad design, so even if we don't have any currently, we have some books that can help fill this gap.
I am also interested in specific psych/soc application books as well though.
The front pillars that connect the roof to the hood are going to create massive blind spots if a person is driving. It looks like a prop from a low budget sci-fi tv show from the 90's. There is more to design than visuals, it has to work too.
For UI/UX:
Game Feel by Steve Swink
Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
For UX design, I strongly recommend The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Recommended Reading:
(Those are just the ones I have sitting on my bookshelf... I have a dozen more on my Kindle that I can add to the list if you're interested.)
---------
Authors & Speakers (lots of TED Talks):
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Let's start a book club! :)
Ignore Carmack (on this one, very specific issue). His conceptual model of what a UI is, can be, and should be, are extremely one directional, vision-centric, and rooted in ancient PARC UIs made for a completely different medium under totally different constraints. VR is a spatial medium by nature, and it simulates the real physical world. In VR, the world IS the interface. You don't need to conceptualize the UI as a separate thing at all. There are only interaction mechanics. You are designing for a mind, not for a rectangle.
To really hammer this home, I recommend studying the following titles:
And reading the following books:
Be a bit critical of that last one - it's is all very old research. it's good for foundation but do not just copy what they've made, use it to synthesize new ideas.
Leap Motion's blog is also an invaluable source of 3d human computer interaction design wisdom. They recently did a series of interaction design sprints that explore 3d physical interactions
I've also gone through their blog and pulled out a bunch of articles that I found the most interesting and useful in my work:
General design:
http://blog.leapmotion.com/designing-intuitive-applications/
Fictional UI:
http://blog.leapmotion.com/fictional-uis-influence-todays-motion-controls/
Vlog FUI pt 1:https://vimeo.com/103174872
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/sci-fi-interaction-designers-gestural-interfaces/
3d OS:
http://blog.leapmotion.com/truly-3d-operating-system-look-like/
Sound in VR: http://blog.leapmotion.com/4-ways-unleash-power-sound-vr/
http://blog.leapmotion.com/explorations-vr-design/
If you get the chance you should play their Blocks demo to see the kind of UX that can teach a completely un-initiated VR user how to interact with a virtual world in an exceptional way. If you really care about HCI, you owe it to yourself to grab one of their devices and go all in on it. It really is an incredible new area to explore and will eventually reveal 2D-only interaction models to be the ancient dinosaurs they are.
Get this book for your design team:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409363606&sr=8-1&keywords=design+of+everyday+things
Just some I like:
Dev
Design
(I am weak in the design side, so take these recommendation with a grain of salt. I recommend them off of overall industry cred they receive and my own personal taste for them.)
below are books I have not read but our generally recommended to people asking this question
You can see a lot of these are theory based. My 0.02 is that books are good for theory, blogs are good for up to date ways of doing things and tutorial type stuff.
Hope this helps!
Battery is about to die so no formatting for you! I'll add note later if I remember.EDIT: another real quick.
EDIT2: Eh, wound up on my computer. Added formatting and some context. Also added more links because I am procrastinating my actual work I have to do (picking icons for buttons is so hard, I never know what icon accurately represents whatever context I am trying to fill).
Junior UX person here. Not much of a programmer myself, but it's sufficient for my needs, as I am only doing front-end design when I dabble with code. There is a multitude of ways to learn how to code, but generally speaking, I find that practicing in small repetition helps the best to retain and absorb information. When you are doing a small code example, try to rewrite differently and see how it works in each of those ways. I also recommend coming up with a small project that you can work on (design and putting a personal site live, for example), as opposed just doing the practices, that way you are presented with a real world environment that contains restrictions and possibilities.
Do you draw? It might help to learn how to draw well, which will help you illustrate designs and potentially become a fun hobby.
Some beginner level books I recommend:
Also, you might want to sign up for this course track offered by Stanford.
Lastly, learn how to meditate (or just ways to maintain inner peace in general). It will help once you enter the industry.
Here’s a fun exercise: find a simple game you like, but don’t go farther than the SNES/Genesis generation of gaming. Play the game and study it. What makes that game special? Focus on its mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. Write it all down too. Then take a mechanic and completely change it while also adding a brand new mechanic to the mix as well. Add your own art style and just have fun with it.
Don’t worry about it sucking, this is an exercise for your design skills. If you understand modeling and you understand coding, it seems you are just missing design. Read books on design, I can’t recommend “The Design of Everyday Things” enough. This book covers design as a whole and gets you to think about why we build things the way we do.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526568855&sr=8-1-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+design+of+everyday+things&psc=1
I'm reading Don Norman's book currently. Highly, highly recommended for anyone who wants to punch those one button Nespresso machines, and break the pull handles off the doors you're apparently supposed to push. Human error and crappy design go hand in hand, and I'll blame crappy design before human error.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1NTCS6NR88HTCDT29XBE
A fantastic book. Another great one is http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ (I have the older version).
Non-fiction:
Fiction:
not tied directly to touch panels, but i found the following books help my touch panels look less like an engineer designed them.
Design of everyday things
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
this one provided insight sticky design, and what makes some apps stand out, it a world of apps it dose hurt to see what is driving some mobile platform/ product development.
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
infocomm published the dashboard for controls, but it is quiet dated, and as pointed out below its counter any kind of modern ui design principal.
This probably isn't the most helpful answer, but any resources I might have used to learn the fundamentals myself are probably pretty outdated now. Honestly I'd just try to find highly rated books on Amazon that are reasonably priced. I haven't read this one for psych research methods, but looking through the table of contents, it covers a lot of what I'd expect (ethics, validity and reliability, study design and common methods) and according to the reviews it's clear, concise, and has good stats info in the appendix. I had a similar "handbook" style textbook in undergrad that I liked. For practicing stats, I'm personally more of a learn-by-doing kind of person, and there are some free courses out there like this one from Khan Academy that covers the basics fairly well.
But if you can, take courses in college as electives! Chances are you'll have a few to fill (or maybe audit some if you can't get credit), so go outside of HCDE's offerings to get some complementary skills in research or design. I usually find classrooms to be more engaging than trying to get through a textbook at home on my own, and especially for psych research methods, you'll probably have a project that gives you hands-on experience doing research with human subjects (most likely your peers). There are lots of free online courses out there as well if you aren't able to take them for credit.
You guys are making me miss school.
Getting specifically into UX self-study, in addition to a UX-specific research methods book (this is a newer version of one I read in school) I'd also go through the UX classics like Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design, Krug's Don't Make Me Think, and Casey's Set Phasers on Stun (this last one being more of a fun read than a practical one).
A couple of lighter reads I was glad to come across:
DMMT
https://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107
The Design of Everyday Things
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654
Read these when you're feeling burned out. They are nice, real easy, feel good reads.
Regarding testing. Every function gets at least one test. Happy path always. The most common expected failures. Edge case testing when you find out you need it.
When you're really good at it, you'll be able to feed arrays of representative dummy data while your directories are being watched for changes. But first, a happy path test for every function. Start there.
Unit testing of the code.
Selenium webdriver is what I've used client side to simulate repeatable use & abuse of the final product.
Integration test are just unit tests passing when you jam everything together. A much bigger issue when you are doing a lot of Dependency Injection-- you need to check that the "handler" you are putting in actually works.
Continuous integration is helpful that your "builds" have all the unit tests and a ping to the selenium tests to run as part of the flow of a release. Just a tool to listen for you to make changes. Learn the three things separately, I've not found a good resource that chains them all together.
Are you asking how to become a better designer, or how to recognize good design?
They are different, but not separate things.
This might help, if you're after the former.
If it's the latter you're after, there's a wealth of books out there: this one among them. But really, learning to recognize good design is a long process of ingestion, regurgitation, trial and error, and experience.
Good design can mean many things. Does it look good? Is it usable? Is it actionable (Does it make you want to do something)? Does it convey a certain mood? Does it reinforce the brand? Does it speak to the target audience? Is it fast? Does it get across a certain message as fast as possible? Is it memorable?
You really have to ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish when it comes to design. What are your goals?
You might not look at something like Amazon and say, "That's great design!", but having your design as understated as possible and maximizing usability is as good design (for their purposes) as much as something like this is meant to be the opposite.
It all really comes back to: What are you trying to accomplish?
Design of Everyday Things is a really good book. Understanding how someone uses the things you build is vital in creating good products.
On typography:
On grids:
On colour:
On usability:
On information design:
On inspiration:
On theory:
On history:
Monographs:
In no particular order but all of the following are great.
The design of everyday things: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1395735493&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40
It changed the way I look at the world and it altered the way I write programs, scripts and APIs.
I think it might be helpful to start from the beginning and learn the principles and hierarchies behind the bells and whistles of Adobe CC.
Each of these I was instructed to read cover to cover when I first began designing and here I am three years later with an extremely successful design career, large in part due to these readings.
Take the time to do it the right way, and the rest will follow naturally.
The Design of Everyday Things is incredibly helpful. It's not about game design at all, but I find some of the best advice comes from other design disciplines.
The Design Of Everyday Things
Tricky business.
I think in some respects you might be better off with By Hand & Eye
Also for a different view about the design of things: The Design of Everyday Things
You don't really need to know that tables are XX height in truth, but if you DO want to know that ... Human Dimension and Interior Space
This is a great starting point and the industry references this book quite a bit.
Another is The Design of Everyday Thing, by Don Norman
Sorry, ran out of time. Here's the rest of my answer:
If you are more of an engineer and not that interested in design, but in Front-End Development, start with Bulletproof Web Design, following up with Transcending CSS.
For JavaScript, read You Don't Know JS and Eloquent Javascript. (The second edition of Eloquent is going to be released on 17th of november, if you can't wait until then, there's a first edition aswell)
A very important design book I forgot aswell: The Design of Everyday Things.
Good luck on your way to mastering Web Design!
Focus on UI design.
A lot of people tend to think of programming as very math-heavy (it's not, unless the domain you're writing software for is weather simulations or something that itself requires math). So we end up thinking the technical side is important and the "soft skills" are unimportant (or at least, not worth including in our study time).
I'm old enough now where I still like programming, but I've realized I don't care about code; I care about making software that people actually use and find useful. Building a tesla coil in your garage is cool, but so what tons of geeks have done that. I want to make something useful, and it doesn't matter how elegant your algorithms are if your program is confusing, unusable, or solves the wrong problem.
I'd recommend these books, in roughly this order:
But to answer your question: personally, I'd do math. I'm so busy that I don't have time to just sit and study math for fun very often, so it'd have been nice if I did that more when I was younger. (But maybe if I did, I'd be saying programming right now.)
Hi. We actually used to have predictions but then removed them. It's an interesting topic actually. For years I was all about the "predict what the user wants" features. In prior jobs I built a lot of the features. But the analytics data consistently showed people didn't use the features.
I never understood why until I read The Design of Everyday Things. In it, Don Norman goes through how people's brains react to different design decisions. One core concept is that brains are almost always wanting to run on auto-pilot and not consciously processing things. Anytime you cause the brain to think it creates stress responses. That sounds obvious but when applied to design it turns out that a single unexpected result creates a much larger impact than a positive result.
When you talk about predictive features, they are often producing wrong and unexpected results. For each time we guess correctly that you want your music app because you might be at the Gym, we're probably going to be wrong 5 times.
Over time I've switched my POV to "build simple and consistent features that give users control". I might be wrong, people ask for predictive features all the time, but the analytics tend to show the simple approach of "rank by last used" is used more.
There are a few engineering folks in there from time to time. It will be very heavy on research and behavioral methodology. Not much math at all (though you could vary that individually depending on your project). I think it would be valuable to an engineer and would certainly broaden your skillset in a meaningful way.
Here is a classic by Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. It's not strictly human factors, but gives a palatable insight into how HF researchers approach problems.
I just chose some books that looked good from this list and this one.
The one's I got:
Clean Code
(already read)
Cracking the Coding Interview
Code Complete
Peopleware
Don't Make Me Think
Code (currently reading)
Regular Expressions Cookbook
Head First Design Patterns
C++ Primer
Working Effectively with Legacy Code
Elements of Programming Interviews in Java
The Mythical Man-Month
The Design of Everyday Things
JavaScript and JQuery
I figure that's enough reading material to last me until I graduate.
Puede ser The design of everyday things
No lo he leído personalmente, pero eso lo recomiendan mucho para UX y cosas de diseño.
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
It won't make you an expert on good design but it's a good start.
My day job is WebGL + UI; for UI I'd recommend:
Also take a look at what industrial design courses are available.
Hey there!
UX Designer/Researcher here. I came from a background in Psychology and Neuroscience research before UX Design. Personally I used the UCSD Extension for a certificate in UX Design. I really appreciated the course work and in conjunction with the Coursera Interaction Design felt like I was given plenty of exposure while also having flexibility to work.
From my experience in the industry, I would look into what area you are interested in. UX careers can involve programming and development, but I use absolutely no coding at my current position (at others I have though). The biggest selling point to an employer is showing an understanding of the process: wireframes, flow charts, user studies, iteration (agile/scrum/waterfall), and design understanding. I have worked on multiple billion dollar webpages and can say the process is nearly identical when scaled down.
If you are interested in some resources to start on your own I would recommend Simon Sinek's Start with Why for understanding how to look at design solutions.
Don Norman has many great books, including The Design of Everyday Things.
Some actual books to look at and learn on your own are A Project Guide to UX Design, Lean UX, and The UX Book. I highly recommend the last one I find it very thorough and digestible and for ~60 bucks is a reasonable textbook.
Lastly, once you have a grasp of UX as a concept I would get familiar with the Adobe Suite, Axure or InVision, and any others from career sites that you might not know about (I really like [Sketch]() as a cheap option ~$99).
Best of luck, feel free to ping me with questions
Book recommendation:
The Design of Everyday Things.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile
hmm. Where to get started. Learn the gestalt principles of visual design. If you're designing interfaces - these little tips will help you associate, and differentiate well enough to be able to direct attention like a conductor.
Learn to do everything deliberately. If you don't have a reason for something, you're not designing, you're arting. Know the difference and when each is appropriate. For example - want a big splash screen with a fancy colorful image? Is it so you can attract the user to a particular part of the screen? Or is it because you have some extra space and feel like filling it with something. If it's the former, go for it. If it's the latter - you're just making an art project.
Learn about design methodologies, from a university if possible. Industrial design technique is very good for digital problem solving as well. Defining a problem, exploring solutions, and determining a valuable path are things that will help you in every project.
Understand why you are doing what you are doing. And who are you doing it for. Never go past page one without establishing those facts.
Stats will help you in that do everything intentionally part. If you can say 80 of people do this, 20 percent of people do that, you can from this say, that this gets center position, bright colors, dark shadow and lots of negative space. That thing that 20 percent of people do, gets bottom right, lowER contrast, and is there for people that expect it.
Good luck, conferences will help. Podcasts will help. Reading interviews from design teams at larger companies will help.
Asking reddit will help. What you should ask for is paid time off to study lol. Good luck.
edit:
Also get this book universal principles of design I think there's a pocket version. This teaches you what works and why and when to use it.
Get the design of every day things. This book teaches you what good design is. It asks the questions - what is design. When is design good. What is an affordance? How do we signal what things do what? How does all that work? Is a coffee cup good design? What about a scissors? How about google.com vs yahoo.com...
Check out don't make me think... or just think about the title for an hour and pretend you read the book.
a popular one now is hooked. Pavlov's dog experiments except with people, basically operant conditioning for designers.
And learn about grid systems and bootstrap for prototyping. Get a prototyping account. For something, proto.io, invision, framerjs.... Invest in omingraffle and sketch, get a creative cloud license if need be. You will need to show people things a lot. You will need to convince people of your ideas and your paths. You will need to constantly throw together quick and dirty visualizations of what you want to say. Invest in tools that make it simple.
Learn how to sell your ideas. You will be asked a ton of questions as people poke holes in your design. You need to figure out how to soothe their worries. They will your decisions, and you will have to show them that you have the answer. Learn how to present. Learn public speaking. Learn how to communicate with superiors. Learn how to talk with programmers. Learn how to give the programmers what they want from you. Learn how to negotiate, learn how to deliver on time. Learn how to handle stress.
Good luck.
I have a few recommendations, but it really depends on what kind of design you're interested in. UX is an umbrella. If you want visual design skills it'll take some practice and not just reading. There's a bunch of stuff out there on graphic design basics.
Here's a few book recommendations that can change how you think about design:
Design of everyday things.
Universal principles of design.
Right here.
How is it not apparent to you that only 3 out of 8 colours mean the same? That is such little overlap, it is literally worse than randomly guessing.
Holy shit, you're identifying way too much with this bad argument.
I'm saying that arbitrary colours instead of numbers is a bad thing, because it's arbitrary. Is it arbitrary? How about we look at your table. Yes. Arbitrary. Two games by the same company use a completely different and conflicting system. Apparently "Orange" is better than "Yellow", and "Purple" is between the two, and "Green" is sometimes top dog and sometimes basically trash. No reason as to why that should be the case. Clearly completely arbitrary.
Is arbitrary bad? I don't know. How about we ask some designers. Like this book here, which is considered a must-read: https://www.amazon.de/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654
What does he say? Well golly I don't know, maybe someone quoted him? Oh wait, yes, I did, because I read the fucking book: Good design is not arbitrary. You don't need a manual to operate an emergency exit door bar, because those are well designed.
So stop frothing at the mouth like a lunatic, because you're wrong about a dumb thing on the internet.
Colors are a bad design to designate 2500 levels.
It's not specific to software, but I feel like anyone working with UX should read this first: http://www.amazon.com/The-Design-Everyday-Things-Expanded/dp/0465050654
The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
Design as Art
Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design
Meggs' History of Graphic Design 6th Edition
Visual Literacy: A Conceptual Approach to Graphic Problem Solving
Woah! That’s a terrible experience, you should definitely get a refund!
Some online resources which may help you:
Coursera has a very good Introductory course on UI and UX design, with topics ranging from prototyping, wireframing & user studies. Attended the course a couple years ago, and it’s been incredibly useful!
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design
Butterick’s practical typography website is a great resource for Typography studies
https://practicaltypography.com/
Nielsen Norman Group’s articles often have great insights on interface design:
https://www.nngroup.com/
If you’re designing for a specific platform, you could read their human interface guidelines, which provide a lot of practical help.
https://developer.apple.com/design/
(Make sure to watch their WWDC sessions, which often talk about basic principles in UI Designs)
If you haven’t already, check out the Design of everyday things by Don Norman. It’s definitely worth reading to get a hang of basic design principles.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540074486&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=design+of+everyday+things&dpPl=1&dpID=410RTQezHYL&ref=plSrch
This one isn't specifically interior design, but it is stellar reading material for any subsect of design as an industry.
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
I'm telling you... you do not have to wait to become a web designer especially if you have any CS chops. It sounds like you need some kind of validation lol? In design you have to be an entrepreneur, design your own experience, find out some people who are doing design x software email them... surprise them, designers love surprises and something different... make your own luck.
As far as Amazon good books, you really want to aim for a whole view of design at this point. Think of it like you wouldn't learn run before you can walk, there is A LOT out there.
> Wow, was not expecting a book first published in 1990! It looks interesting, but do you think it contains enough relevance today?
Tufte is one of the seminal leaders of visual design.
Old books are often the best books.
Here's one for you from the woman that defined the industry Lucy Suchman's Plan's and situation actions
Donald Norman's Design of Everyday things
Alan Cooper's don't make me think
Alan Cooper's The Inmates are running the asylum
> do not require to think about how to use it
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654
"knowledge in the world" - easy to figure out how to do things w/out thinking/knowing all the details. if you know what you need to do, you can figure out how to do it.
vs.
"knowledge in the head" - you have to memorize things. harder learning curve. much much more efficient for power users. most cli tools are "knowledge in the head". most CLI applications in linux are "knowledge in the head" applications because they don't have the same UI affordances as a desktop/windowed application.
GNU screen and tmux ARE CLI applications. you might run one on your desktop directly, but they are even more useful to run on remote servers and keep a persistent session.
also, you may have to tweak the config a bit, but i see almost no difference in actually using screen vs. tmux (except tmux has better features). even the default key-bindings are the same.
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. Then read the k8s docs. If you're working complex systems the book is also relevant.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465050654