In the last couple weeks, as many people have asked me for a list of UX Design resources. It felt like time to throw up a page. I am assuming this will not have longevity as the tools and exercise popularity seems to shift every 2–3 years, so feel free to look back at this and have a laugh in 2023.
Best Newsletter & Blog subscriptions:
NNG Newsletter: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/subscribe/
Cognitive UXD Newsletter: https://cognitiveuxd.com/
Michael Margolis of GV Blog: https://library.gv.com/@mmargolis
Jared Spool Researcher UIE https://www.uie.com/newsletter/
Josh Seiden on Medium https://medium.com/@jseiden
My Favorite UX Books:
The "Animal" Textbooks by O'Reilly are all pretty great and hold up decently:
Information Architecture (the Polar bear)
User Story Mapping (the bird)
Designing Interfaces (the duck)
UX Strategy (the wolf)
Org Design for Design Orgs (fish)
Cog Psych category:
Hooked: How to build Habit forming products by Nir Eyal
Influence, the psychology of persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
The Social Animal, Elliot Aronson
100 things every designer needs to know about people by Susan Weinschenk
Honorable mention: The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz
General UX and intro to UX books:
Aaron Walter, Designing for Emotion
About Face, the essentials of interaction design Alan Cooper
Don't make me think Steve Krugg
The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman
Sprint, Jake Knapp
Rosenfeld media has a lot of great (and frankly, a few not so great) books on specific UX topics. Some of my favorites are:
The User Experience team of one by Leah Buley
Interviewing Users https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/interviewing-users/
Card Sorting https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/card-sorting/
Mental Models https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/
Design Books:
Envisioning Information, Tufte
Visual Intelligence: How we create what we see
Copywriting:
Letting go of the words, Janice Ginny Redish
Book to give to someone new to the value of UX Design
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Useful Links, Learning & Resource websites:
Usability.Gov has a bunch of useful legal forms, among other things https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/resources/templates.html
NNG in general https://www.nngroup.com/ and for beginners, NNG UX Research Cheat Sheet https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/
Mailchimp Branding: https://mailchimp.com/about/brand-assets/
An explanation of NIST Password Rules https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/08/18/nists-new-password-rules-what-you-need-to-know/
Google Material Design https://material.io/design/
Apple Human Interface Guidelines https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/
Design System libraries of other companies for reference: https://adele.uxpin.com/
Hipster Lorem Ipsum text because it's funny https://hipsum.co/?paras=5&type=hipster-centric&start-with-lorem=1
Find matching hex codes and pantone for total brand alignment https://www.pantone.com/products/graphics/color-bridge-coated
My favorite simple accessibility contrast checker https://contrastchecker.com/ [noting that the Stark Plug In for Sketch is also good]
Shameless plug for NYCUXPA https://www.nycuxpa.org/ of which I am a member, and IDxA which apparently everyone goes to except me https://www.ixdanyc.org/ I keep meaning to get around to that...
This has some handy grids for different sized artboards https://grid.kkuistore.com/
I use this article for reference sometimes on type scales https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/exploring-responsive-type-scales-cf1da541be54
IDEO has some fun exercises https://www.ideo.com/
Stay for the Articles. Don't stay for the surprisingly 1990's themed interface http://interactions.acm.org/
I show this video to stakeholders when I need a little more UX evangelism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O94kYyzqvTc
Software Tools:
Airtable for managing data and lightweight CRM prototyping https://airtable.com/
InVision for prototyping and asset handoff https://login.invisionapp.com/auth/sign-in
Temi for transcription https://www.temi.com/ .
User Interviews for finding those hard to reach remote research participants https://www.userinterviews.com/researcher
IdeaBoard for free group remote sticky note exercises http://ideaboardz.com/
Notely is Another free one I use for remote capturing sometimes in a similar vein is https://note.ly/
Mural is a fancier, paid, remote collaboration and sticky noting site https://mural.co/
Draw.IO is maybe not the best diagramming tool out there but it is also free and free is good. https://www.draw.io/
https://www.sketch.com/ Sketch App is fairly standard hi fi wireframing tool.
Adobe XD is hot on its heels though and I hear great things about it although I have not personally tried it yet https://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html.
The much more affordable Figma is also gaining popularity, although it still lacks some of the advanced features of the above two https://www.figma.com/.
I think of Axure as being more for developers at this point, which is why I am glossing over it, in case you are wondering. The interaction is good but the visuals leave much to be desired.
InVision Craft Sync https://www.invisionapp.com/craft is essential if you're using Sketch with InVision
InVision Studio for rudimentary motion design (hopefully they work on this because it's not there yet... But I have high hopes) https://www.invisionapp.com/studio
Unity Hub https://unity.com/ for those doing AR / VR / Advanced motion design
Adobe creative suite, for photo editing and whatnot https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html
GitHub Desktop for those of us who are more programming inclined (and for the design system manager once we have a launched product), with a license. https://desktop.github.com/
I like Pixelmator for batch image editing. I am the only one who likes Pixelmator. So probably just me on that one, but I remain proud: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator/
Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ or Google Drive are essential for simultaneous file sharing and collaboration https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.docs&hl=en_US
Slack https://slack.com/ can be useful for team building and communicating with with remote teams and Dev. teams
user testing https://www.usertesting.com/ is great for established orgs, although expensive for remote usability tests.
optimal workshop https://www.optimalworkshop.com/ for card sorting and tree testing which we can run through other platforms if you already have participants somewhere else.
I like the Platforma Kit https://platforma.ws/ and modify it to best practices (because it's not there to start...) for quick Med. Fi. Prototyping.
I also like Basalmiq or Omnigraffle for Med Fi, but it's a little expensive if you already have Sketch in my opinion so I usually use Sketch for both.
An icon subscription can save a lot of time on making everything from scratch [although my pride wants to let you know that I -can- make icons from scratch]. Flat icon license ($9/mo) because they have a lot of different styles (and it appears to me it’s what the Hartford is already using) https://www.flaticon.com/ . Additionally/Alternately we like The Noun Projecthttps://thenounproject.com/ (paid) and Icon Monstr https://iconmonstr.com/ (which at the time of writing this is free, I think)
Appear In has Web browser based videoconferencing (comes in handy in a pinch when other tech isn't working!) https://appear.in/
Hardware tools:
Love me some large screen imacs https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac/27-inch - so much better to be able to see the whole map and once and zoom in on details in design. Don’t get me started on color and contrast accuracy and high resolution needs for pixel perfection before we launch to thousands of people. You can also buy a Mac Laptop and a large color calibrated monitor separately, but by that point you've spent about the same amount of money amirite?
Sony Recording Device - Sony ICD-UX560 to record interviews and the mic is surprisingly great! Makes me feel like an 80's journalist. Five stars.
Individualized Designer hardware needs, I know some designers are lost without their Cintiq https://wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays/wacom-cintiq. I have a feeling the ipad pro and pencil are going to play a bigger factor going forward too. I personally use a Apple magic mouse and Apple trackpad combo with Sketch as modified by Better Touch Tools https://folivora.ai/downloads/for quick zooming in and out of large design maps. Got to protect the money makers!
