The Best UX/UI Designer Tools, Resources, Blogs & Books Collection

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.

9. HelloErik Experience Design -The design and experience blog of Erik Flowers.

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.

27. Usabilla Blog -Useful UX articles or designers.

28. Dribbble -An online community for showcasing user-made artwork.

29. Behance -Showcase and discover the latest work from top online portfolios by creative professionals across industries.

30. NN/g -A leading voice in the user experience field.

Free UX & UI Books

1. 50 User Experience Best Practices

2. UX Design Trends 2015 & 2016

3. Web UI Design Best Practices

4. Magic of CSS

5. Bright Ideas for User Experience Designers

6. The UX Reader

7. Don’t Make Me Think

8. UX Storytellers: Connecting the Dots

9. UX Design for Startups

10. Web Design Book of Trends

11. The Guide to Wireframing

Click here for more details about these UX books.

We hope you enjoyed getting to know about these design resource and tools. Hopefully, through them, your journey of being a UX or UI becomes easier!

Original Post

About Author

Becky

Email: becky@jongde.com

10 Mobile app Design Principles

These guidelines will help in designing better mobile apps which will improve the overall user experience. Mobile is very powerful device and becoming as an important part of human life. So it is very important to design better, simple and interesting interfaces which helps people in their life and also bring satisfaction. some basic design principles are mentioned in the context of Mobile application.

1. Avoid designing long Menus in Mobile app

Long Mobile menus are the result of poor architecture and content grouping of application. It affects the ‘Decision Making’ of a User, also it destroys the importance of main function.  Group the functions properly and show the small menus with less no. of choices. 

2. Select the right navigation system for your application 

Navigation is the important aspect of any mobile app because User follows the navigation pattern and finds the information. There are 2 types of navigation system given as follows,

Primary Navigation types 

- Hierarchical (Drill Down)

- Persistent 

- Sequential

Secondary navigation types

- Search

- Index Pages

- Quick Links

- Bread Crumbs

- Embedded Links

3. Web to Mobile transformation should be responsive 

Mobile websites should be responsive to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices.

9 best Wireframing Tools for prototyping

Wireframing is one of the important stages in Design process. Designers use wireframing to express & visualize idea, concept and solutions. Especially in Human computer interaction (HCI) wireframing helps in understanding the solution and making iterations in design. Presenting some wireframing tools to which you can use for designing websites, webapps, tablet, mobile apps etc.

List of wireframing tools

1. Axure

Website:  http://www.axure.com/

Remarks: Low-Hi fidelity, export html, interactions, cloud capability

2. Balsamiq

Website: https://balsamiq.com/

Remarks: Low fidelity, export html-pdf, interactions.

3. Mockingbird

Website: https://gomockingbird.com/home

Remarks: Low-Hi fidelity, interactions, cloud capability

4. UXpin

Website: https://www.uxpin.com/

Remarks: Low-Hi fidelity, export html, interactions, cloud capability, PS integration, Usability testing

5. Mockflow

Website:  http://mockflow.com/

Remarks:  Low-Hi fidelity, export html, interactions, cloud capability, sharing, readymade components

6. Gliffy

Website:  https://www.gliffy.com/  

Remarks:  Low-Hi fidelity, export html, interactions, cloud capability

7. JustinMind

Website:  http://www.justinmind.com/

Remarks:  Low-Hi fidelity, export html, interactions, cloud capability

8. Omnigraffle

Website:  https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle

Remarks:  Low-Hi fidelity, export html, interactions, cloud capability

9. MS office Power Point

Website:  https://products.office.com/en-us/powerpoint

Remarks:  Low fidelity, presentation, animations

How to conduct Heuristic Evaluation

A heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method for computer software that helps to identify usability problems in the user interface (UI) design. It specifically involves evaluators examining the interface and judging its compliance with recognized usability principles  (the "heuristics ").

It is really necessary for any Usability analyst/ UX designer to know proper way to conduct 'Heuristic Evaluation'. lets see the process step by step.

1. Understand Participants and Facilitators 

First step in conducting Heuristic Evaluation is finding 'Participants' who will be contributing actively in this process. Generally design team members/ domain experts / stakeholders becomes participants for H.E. Facilitator is the person who manages and conducts this process and prepares evaluation reports. (Recommended 'Participants' counts 3-5) 

Make sure all the Participants understand Heuristic Principles, if not brief them about Heuristic Principles.

2. Prepare use-cases 

For conducting H.E. prepare the use cases of primary features of application. Use cases should be real scenarios in which application is currently being used. You can conduct H.E. of any kind of application like, website, mobile website, mobile or tablet app etc. 

3. Prepare Participant's and Facilitator's sheet 

Now your task is to prepare Participant's sheet and Facilitator's sheet. Both the sheets are same but being used at different steps. Sheet includes below mentioned fields,

- Use cases

- Problem description

- Severity 

- Heuristic Principles affected

Ex. of a sheet is shown here,

Download the Heuristic Evaluation templates

4. Individual Evaluation 

Now ask your participant to use application on the basis of use cases mentioned in 'Participant's sheet' twice or tries. While using the application if they find any problem or finding then ask them to make a note. Also ask them to provide 'Severity' rating to each problem they found and associate with affected heuristic principles. 

Severity rating scale

1 - Cosmic or minor problem

2 - Moderate problem

3 - Major problem

4 - usability disaster  

Perform this step with all the participants individually.

5. Sit together and consolidate findings 

Once all the participants have evaluated application individually now we start the 'Group activity'.

Ask all the participants to tell their findings/problems with severity and discuss about it. This step will provide you unique problems and finalized severity.

Now you have problems, severity and heuristics principles which are affected.

Now next step is reporting and presenting the insights from this activity.

Usability of Error messages

While designing ‘Error’ messages or ‘Error’ page for website, mobile site or any application, we should always keep ‘Usability of Error messages’ in mind. Error can come from user or by system (back end) but our system should show error messages properly. Heuristic Principles are the source for getting inspiration for designing it. Some of the key tips mentioned below to make ‘Error’ messages helpful.

Tips for 'Error Message' Usability

1. Don’t use Technical jargon in Error messages

Heuristic Principles - Match between system and real world

Many websites or interfaces show ‘Error’ messages in technical terms like ‘Null object exception’, ‘Java Lang etc file is missing’ etc. First of all understand carefully that normal user is not able to comprehend it. Show the error messages in plain text and in simple language.

2. What Error is occurred?

Heuristic Principles - Visibility of system status
Always show the error upfront to user and written in plain language that user can understand.

3. Reason or cause for this error

Heuristic Principles - Visibility of system statusTell why this error has been occurred, if user has made any wrong action or error is coming from system back-end, show the reason.

4. What should a user do now?

Heuristic Principles - Help user diagnose and recover from error
If error has been occurred and you have told him/her the reason next step is to show what he/she can do now. Like contact admin or choose correct path or make correct entry or wait for some time.

5. Help or direction for further steps

Heuristic Principles - Help user diagnose and recover from error & Help and documentation
Provide complete information about user actions. If user has to contact to Admin then show the contact details about Admin, if user has to wait then show how much time, if user has to make correct entry in any form then help him by providing a dummy entry.6. Be polite and humble

Don’t forget, user is in trouble because some error has been occurred in his/her system. At this time tone of error messages should be polite and relaxing to user.

Showing error messages - 

Best example of presenting Error message  -