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Two words: Refactoring UI

https://www.refactoringui.com

I read it and began to apply what I learned, and my team now considers me the design expert of the team. And trust me, I'm not a naturally gifted designer.

Wanted to second this recommendation.

It's still very hard for me to design a _good_ looking website from scratch as that takes actual creativity and imagination, but after reading Refactoring UI I at least have a bunch of tactics to stop myself from designing _bad_ looking websites, because I now know exactly _what_ makes them look bad.

That is a problem with so many themes I see. For a real web site you need something that scales across pages that have little text and a lot of text, mobile and desktop, etc.

I am trying to learn to make web based application interfaces. Like, say, a web form that manages a stateful process. The user provides info to a form, initiates a set of actions, and then monitors the results and provides further input.

I am definitely not a designer. Mostly I just want a design that looks decent and stays out of the way.

I have tried widget libraries but I have been happier with the results I am getting from plain old css.