Editors note: The following article was updated on March, 2024, to offer relevant information about available UI/UX design resources and blogs.
It can be intimidating to get into user experience, but don’t fear: there’s plenty of help around. To help you navigate that sea of information, we make a cool list to share with you. This list covers UX/UI blogs, resources, books and tools (in no particular order). I hope it will help you guys to get better at what you’re doing!
UX Blogs and Resources
1.Awwwards-A place to find inspiration and talent; a space for debate; a place to share knowledge and experience.
2.UX Magazine -This site creates a community with location-based listings for conferences, jobs, workshops, informal meetups, and classes.
3.UX Myths -Collects the most frequent user experience misconceptions and explains why they don’t hold true.
4.Designer News -Best UX/UI related articles collection.
5.Usability Geek -A wider array of topics that extend beyond usability, such as User Experience (UX), conversion, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Architecture (IA).
6.Lukew-A Product Director at Google shares his views on Web and device strategy, interaction design, visual design, usability, and much more.
7.UXness - A The UXness Blog is your portal to a richer understanding of User Experience (UX) design. It's a treasure trove of insightful articles that dissect key topics like: UX fundamentals, Emerging UX trends, Practical UX design tips and tricks, Inspiring UX case studies, UX events, UX Tools, UX Books and UX principles and laws etc. UXness is a community of 35K+ UX enthusiasts connect across the globe and have ~2K daily article reads.
8.Design Talks-545 Talks for Designers from 68 UX/UI conferences all over the world.
10.Weeklypixels-Reviews on design Books, user experience books, UX processes, graphic design books, typography books, lettering books.
11.UX Booth -Feature content on analytics, content strategy, information architecture, interaction design, philosophy, research, universal design and accessibility.
12.Mockplus Blog -The newest UX/UI design resources recommended for UX and UI designers.
13.Smashing Magazine’s UX Design Category -UX/UI experts share with you their valuable ideas, practical tips, useful guidelines, recommended best practices and great case studies.
14.Design Shack-Showcases inspiring examples of design, alongside resources and articles.
15.Creative Bloq -It is a high volume blog for creatives that features content on web design, illustration, graphic design, 3d, digital art, and more.
16.Beautiful Pixels-Showcases some of the best examples iOS and Android apps as well as UI design across various types of media
17.UX Movement-Publish articles showing how good and bad interface design practices affect user behavior.
18.DesignModo UX -Resource for both beginners and advanced designers looking to expand and improve their knowledge.
19.1stwebdesigner -Post the latest design resource for UX/UI designers.
20.Noupe-Feature content on responsive design, UX/UI, web development, inspiration and more.
21.Six Revisions-Publish articles, guides, tutorials, news and other forms of content for people who design and build sites and apps.
22.Speckyboy-Fresh and useful resources and inspirational art, covering web design and development, graphic design, mobile development.
23.Designzzz -Offers free and useful resources for designers and developers.
24.Vandelay Design -Post creative bouts of inspiration that we all need for success.
25.Boxes and Arrows-The practice, innovation, and discussion of design.
26.InspirationFeed -You’ll find industry guidelines, case studies, design & development resources, tips & tricks, and other related web articles here.
A chatbot (also known as a talkbot, chatterbot, Bot,
chatterbox, Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program which
conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods.– Wiki
A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes
artificial intelligence that you interact with via a chat interface. The
service could be any number of things, ranging from functional to fun, and it
could live in any major chat product (Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Text
Messages, etc.). – Chatbotsmagazine
At the moment, chat bots are basically replacing individual
apps. Rather than closing Facebook Messenger and opening Uber, you can simply
message Uber and ask for a ride.
Benefits of Chatbots
1. No UI approach
Chatbots are minimalist and simplistic in nature. With respect to UI components Chatbots are having simple chat box and very less UI components. In apps or websites you can find some persistent UI components which keeps grabbing your attention but in case of Chatbot very less UI components make users focused on topic.
2. Information is prime factor
Users come to platform with some motivation and intention and a system which fulfills user’s intention smoothly wins users heart. In chatbot, there is no such page to page navigation, no fancy UI components only users intentions come in form of text (message) and it is getting answered in form of response. In chatbot information is king.
3. Less distraction
Due to less UI, contextual information and one story (response) at a time to focus makes Chatbots less distractive instead of any app/website.
4. Personalized behavior
It is a key advantage of using chatbot, it can behave differently according to different users. With the help of intelligence and NPL it can identify ‘New users, savvy users etc.’ and provide responses according to context.
5. Goal oriented platform
A well designed and intelligent chatbot gives you feeling of master. You do not need to find any option in big menus, you do not need to search information in different pages, all you need to do is just text it and bot will offer you. Your goals are prime important and you directly need to tell your goal and it will respond in efficient manner.
6. Human touch
Chatbot brings experience of human touch, which gives satisfaction, increases trust and make interaction lively. You cannot feel that you are interacting with a bot if it is well developed.
7. Platform independent design
Chatbots can run irrespective of platforms, you do need to think about android or iOS, web etc.
8. Brings delight in responses
A well designed chatbot always bring delight feeling via responses. In Chatbots responses are contextual, personalized and crafted with human touch which brings value and liveliness in interaction.
9. Better understanding of user behavior
If you want to understand behavior of your users then Chatbots are a great option. It can record all the responses and interactions of users, which can be analyzed in more effective manner.
The mobile app market is saturated with competition. Trends turn over quickly, but no niche can last very long without several competitors jumping onto the bandwagon. These conditions result in a high failure rate across the board for the mobile app market. Only 20% of downloaded apps see users return after the first use, whereas 3% of apps remain in use after a month.
If any part of an app is undesirable, or slow to get the hang of, users are more likely to install a new one, rather than stick it out with the imperfect product. Nothing is wasted for the consumer when disposing of an app - except for the efforts of the designers and developers, that is. So, why is it that so many apps fail? Is this a predictable phenomenon that app designers and developers should accept? For clients, is this success rate acceptable? What does it take to bring your designs into the top 3% of prosperous apps?
The common mistakes span from failing to maintain consistency throughout the lifespan of an app, to attracting users in the first place. How can apps be designed with intuitive simplicity, without becoming repetitive and boring? How can an app offer pleasing details, without losing sight of a greater purpose? Most apps live and die in the first few days, so here are the top ten most common mistakes that designers can avoid.
Only 3% of mobile apps are in use after being downloaded.
Common Mistake #1: A Poor First Impression
Often the first use, or first day with an app, is the most critical period to hook a potential user. The first impression is so critical that it could be an umbrella point for the rest of this top ten. If anything goes wrong, or appears confusing or boring, potential users are quickly disinterested. Although, the proper balance for first impressions is tricky to handle. In some cases, a lengthy onboarding, or process to discover necessary features can bores users. Yet, an instantly stimulating app may disregard the need for a proper tutorial, and promote confusion. Find the balance between an app that is immediately intuitive, but also introduces the users to the most exciting, engaging features quickly. Keep in mind that when users are coming to your app, they’re seeing it for the first time. Go through a proper beta testing process to learn how others perceive your app from the beginning. What seems obvious to the design team, may not be for newcomers.
Improper Onboarding
Onboarding is the step by step process of introducing a user to your app. Although it can be a good way to get someone quickly oriented, onboarding can also be a drawn out process that stands in the way of your users and their content. Often these tutorials are too long, and are likely swiped through blindly.
Sometimes, users have seen your app used in public or elsewhere, such that they get the point and just want to jump in. So, allow for a sort of quick exit strategy to avoid entirely blocking out the app upon its first use. To ensure that the onboarding process is in fact effective, consider which values this can communicate and how. The onboarding process should demonstrate the value of the app in order to hook a user, rather than just an explanation.
Go easy on the intro animation
Some designers address the issue of a good first impression with gripping intro animations to dazzle new users. But, keep in mind that every time someone wants to run the app, they’re going to have to sit through the same thing over and over. If the app serves a daily function, then this will tire your users quickly. Ten seconds of someone’s day for a logo to swipe across the screen and maybe spin a couple times don’t really seem worth it after a while.
Common Mistake #2: Designing an App Without Purpose
Avoid entering the design process without succinct intentions. Apps are often designed and developed in order to follow trends, rather than to solve a problem, fill a niche, or offer a distinct service. What is the ambition for the app? For the designer and their team, the sense of purpose will affect every step of a project. This sensibility will guide each decision from the branding or marketing of an app, to the wireframe format, and button aesthetic. If the purpose is clear, each piece of the app will communicate and function as a coherent whole. Therefore, have the design and development team continually consider their decisions within a greater goal. As the project progresses, the initial ambition may change. This is okay, as long as the vision remains coherent.
Conveying this vision to your potential users means that they will understand what value the app brings to their life. Thus, this vision is an important thing to communicate in a first impression. The question becomes how quickly can you convince users of your vision for the app? How it will improve a person’s life, or provide some sort of enjoyment or comfort. If this ambition is conveyed quickly, then as long as your app is in fact useful, it will make it into the 3%.
Often joining a pre-existing market, or app niche, means that there are apps to study while designing your own. Thus, be careful how you choose to ‘re-purpose’ what is already out there. Study the existing app market, rather than skimming over it. Then, improve upon existing products with intent, rather than thoughtlessly imitating.
Common Mistake #3: Missing Out On UX Design Mapping
Be careful not to skip over a thoughtful planning of an app’s UX architecture before jumping into design work. Even before getting to a wireframing stage, the flow and structure of an app should be mapped out. Designers are often too excited to produce aesthetics and details. This results in a culture of designers who generally under appreciate UX, and the necessary logic or navigation within an app. Slow down. Sketch out the flow of the app first before worrying too much about the finer brush strokes. Often apps fail from an overarching lack of flow and organization, rather than imperfect details. However, once the design process takes off always keep the big picture in mind. The details and aesthetic should then clearly evoke the greater concept.
Common Mistake #4: Disregarding App Development Budget
As soon as the basis of the app is sketched, this is a good time to get a budget from the development team. This way you don’t reach the end of the project and suddenly need to start cutting critical features. As your design career develops, always take note of the average costs of constructing your concepts so that your design thinking responds to economic restraints. Budgets should be useful design constraints to work within.
Many failed apps try to cram too many features in from launch.
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Common Mistake #5: Cramming in Design Features
Hopefully, rigorous wireframing will make the distinction between necessary and excessive functions clear. The platform is already the ultimate swiss army knife, so your app doesn’t need to be. Not only will cramming an app with features lead to a likely disorienting User Experience, but an overloaded app will also be difficult to market. If the use of the app is difficult to explain in a concise way, it’s likely trying to do too much. Paring down features is always hard, but it’s necessary. Often, the best strategy might be to gain trust in the beginning with a single or few features, then later in the life of the app can new ones be ‘tested’. This way, the additional features are less likely to interfere with the crucial first few days of an apps’ life.
Common Mistake #6: Dismissing App Context
Although the conditions of most design offices practically operate within a vacuum, app designers must be aware of wider contexts. Although purpose and ambition are important, they become irrelevant if not directed within the proper context. Remember that although you and your design team may know your app very well, and find its interfacing obvious, this may not be the case for first time users, or different demographics.
Consider the immediate context or situation in which the app is intended to be used. Given the social situation, how long might the person expect to be on the app for? What else might be helpful for them to stumble upon given the circumstance? For example, UBER’s interface excels at being used very quickly. This means that for the most part, there isn’t much room for other content. This is perfect because when a user is out with friends and needing to book a ride, your conversation is hardly interrupted in the process. UBER hides a lot of support content deep within the app, but it only appears once the scenario calls for it.
Who is the target audience for the app? How might the type of user affect how the design of the app? Perhaps, consider that an app targeted for a younger user may be able to take more liberties in assuming a certain level of intuition from the user. Whereas, many functions may need to be pointed out for a less tech savvy user. Is your app meant to be accessed quickly and for a short period of time? Or, is this an app with lots of content that allows users to stay a while? How will the design convey this form of use?
A good app design should consider the context in which it is used.
Common Mistake #7: Underestimating Crossing Platforms
Often apps are developed quickly as a response to changing markets or advancing competitors. This often results in web content being dragged into the mobile platform. A constant issue, which you’d think would be widely understood by now, is that often apps and other mobile content make poor transitions between the desktop, or mobile platforms. No longer can mobile design get away with scaling down web content in the hope of getting a business quickly into the mobile market. The web to mobile transition doesn’t just mean scaling everything down, but also being able to work with less. Functions, navigation and content must all be conveyed with a more minimal strategy. Another common issue appears when an app developing team aspires to release a product simultaneously on all platforms, and through different app stores. This often results in poor compatibility, or a generally buggy, unpolished app.The gymnastics of balancing multiple platforms may be too much to add onto the launch of an app. However, it doesn’t hurt to sometimes take it slowly with one OS at a time, and iron out the major issues, before worrying about compatibility between platforms.
Common Mistake #8: Overcomplicating App Design
The famous architect Mies Van der Rohe once said, “It’s better to be good than to be unique”. Ensure that your design is meeting the brief before you start breaking the box or adding flourishes. When a designer finds themselves adding things in order to make a composition more appealing or exciting, these choices will likely lack much value. Continue to ask throughout the design process, how much can I remove? Instead of designing additively, design reductively. What isn’t needed? This method is directed as much towards content, concept and function as it is aesthetics. Over complexity is often a result of a design unnecessarily breaking conventions. Several symbols and interfaces are standard within our visual and tactile language. Will your product really benefit from reworking these standards? Standard icons have proven themselves to be universally intuitive. Thus, they are often the quickest way to provide visual cues without cluttering a screen. Don’t let your design flourishes get in the way of the actual content, or function of the app. Often, apps are not given enough white space. The need for white space is a graphic concept that has transcended both digital and print, thus it shouldn’t be underrated. Give elements on the screen room to breath so that all of the work you put into navigation and UX can be felt.
The app design process can be reductive, rather than additive.
Common Mistake #9: Design Inconsistencies
To the point on simplicity, if a design is going to introduce new standards, they have to at least be consistent across the app. Each new function or piece of content doesn’t necessarily have to be an opportunity to introduce a new design concept. Are texts uniformly formatted? Do UI elements behave in predictable, yet pleasing ways throughout the app? Design consistency must find the balance between existing within common visual language, as well as avoiding being aesthetically stagnant. The balance between intuitive consistency and boredom is a fine line.
Common Mistake #10: Under Utilizing App Beta Testing
All designers should analyze the use of their apps with some sort of feedback loop in order to learn what is and isn’t working. A common mistake in testing is for a team to do their beta testing in-house. You need to bring in fresh eyes in order to really dig into the drafts of the app. Send out an ad for beta testers and work with a select audience before going public. This can be a great way to iron out details, edit down features, and find what’s missing. Although, beta testing can be time consuming, it may be a better alternative to developing an app that flops. Anticipate that testing often takes 8 weeks for some developers to do it properly. Avoid using friends or colleagues as testers as they may not criticize the app with the honesty that you need. Using app blogs or website to review your app is another way to test the app in a public setting without a full launch. If you’re having a hard time paring down features for your app, this is a good opportunity to see what elements matter or not.
The app design market is a battleground, so designing products which are only adequate just isn’t enough. Find a way to hook users from the beginning - communicate, and demonstrate the critical values and features as soon as you can. To be able to do this, your design team must have a coherent vision of what the app is hoping to achieve. In order to establish this ambition, a rigorous story-boarding process can iron out what is and isn’t imperative. Consider which types of users your app may best fit with. Then refine and refine until absolutely nothing else can be taken away from the project without it falling apart.
Have you meet some problems on user interface design for the mobile device? For example, small mobile screens? Bad user experience? In this article, I will cover some things you can do to learn practical user interface design (UI design).
1. UI design principle
Do not think the practical UI design principle does not apply to small mobile screens.
Five elements of UI design you should take into consideration:
A). Goal-driven Design. This allows you to customize the app working process and meet requirements for target users. B). Usability. It may look empty, but you have to guarantee your application is usable. Users don’t like to download a complex app from App Store. Usability makes your product useful and hopeful. C). Affordance & Signifiers. The signifier is an implication of affordance.For example, underlined blue text reminds you it’s a hyperlink, and it can link to other pages when you click it. With correct signifier, users can easily understand UI element.
D). Learn-ability. You want users to instinctively know the function of your interface.Familiar pattern can let users easily adapt to the new app.
E). Feedback & Response Time. Feedback could help users to know whether the task has been completed or not.It can be a very simple hum, or complex modal window that keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions. Please make sure your prompt be friendly, humane, and can be responded within the stipulated time.
2.User Objectives
Screen size is not the only constraint on mobile UI design, but also users themselves and their habits. Thus, the first step is to study the user habits when you decide to create an app for a target group.
A). Character. The fiction character based on your target user group could help you to understand how to run your app well.
B). User scenario can help to stimulate the user behavior. That could inspire you to understand how the final effect will look like as their expectation to achieve. Ultimately, you can design the most suitable UI for them.
C). Experience the design progress. You may see all the conditions on a single interaction that will happen in each step. Particularly user emotion and surrounding environment could be captured carefully on this progress.
3. Prototyping is necessary
Design and research can be progressed simultaneously. For example, you can quickly draw out the UI design outline based on what you have learned. Then create a simple prototype before finalized, by paper and pen or by professional rapid prototyping tools such as Mockplus. So that we could begin to understand users engage content and behavior during this process. With a detailed outline, the detailed information about layout and structure will be integrated into the design progress. At last, rapid prototyping could help on testing your apps and also user thinking.
4. Convenient interaction
There are two common interaction design patterns:
A). Touch gesture. The definition of touch device is determined by the gestures like touch, slide, double-click, pinch and zoom. These gestures are becoming the second natural response of users, a kind of subconscious action .
B). Animation. Users will be more concentrated on user interfaces when you add animations to your design.There is an obvious visual discrepancy between the disappear and slide-out of elements. The combination of touch gesture and animation could provide users a deeper and more authentic experience about the mobile apps.
5. Fat thumb interaction
“A new study published by Saul Greenberg's lab at the University of Calgary proposes that the fatness of your thumb can be used for new user interaction possibilities on your smart phone and other touch devices like the Kindle Fire.”
Comparing with the mouse, your finger pixel width is much wider. So, you should pay attention to finger-friendly design. In particular, you have to leave enough space for the user fingertip. If your buttons are too small or too tight, the user can not operate accurately. Then they will be frustrated and give up your apps.
A tip for thumb interaction design. What you should take into the consideration is that the pixel width of your finger. Let us suppose that we all have fat fingers. Okay, that’s not true. But you should know that a touch target that’s 45 – 57 pixels wide allows the user’s finger to fit snugly inside the target. This converts to 45 – 57 pixels, which is wider than what most mobile guidelines suggest. Apple has suggested a touch target size of 44×44 pixels. But that’s does not always apply to your design, what you should keep in mind is how to give consideration to finger-friendly design and finger interactions. 6. Read books, magazines & blogs
Lots of tips on how to learn UI/UX design are available on the Internet, learning to absorb skills and experiences from books, magazines & blogs is also a good method for you to improve yourself.
I hope this article could help you to get some idea of how to go about getting some practical experience in UI/UX design.
