Ask HN: How to learn design and UI/UX
I've long envied developers that are also competent designers. How does a developer without an artistic bone in their body acquire this skill? HN, please point me to resources, courses and books.
I used to think that designers started from a blank page and came up with everything magically through their sense of taste. But since I started using Penpot (a Figma like open source design tool) I realized the process is entirely different, you have a bunch of pre-defined variables which you use everywhere and it's through consistency that you achieve beautiful designs.
For example, you pre-define your typography (4 to 5 font-sizes/weights/line-height combinations, ...), you pre-define your color palette (3 or 4 main colours with a couple of shades for each), you define your grid sizing with a variable "x" which will control white-space. Once you define all these elements it all comes together easily, you apply them depending on the role of each element and the consistency of always using the same stylistic components and spacing makes the site beautiful.
This is my advice as someone who used to be terrible and thought I had no artistic bone in my body. It won't make you as great as a pro but it does make everything easier, and it makes things make sense.
I know it sounds weird, but a lot of my competency as a designer comes from the fact that I have spent an absurd amount of time with end-users and have developed a very good intuition for how they behave and what their pain points would be. (I gained this through teaching and librarianing, but help desk would a decent substitute).
And I suggest marketing because the relentless focus on segmentation and knowing your targets prevents you from falling into a pitfall I see even good UX/UI designers fall into which is designing how all the white papers/best practices tell you to without considering what audience you're designing for.
I wouldn't consider myself particularly visually artistic (I can, but my artistic abilities are very mid outside of writing), but I'm a decent designer.
Use a desktop PC, not a laptop, and unplug the mouse. Learn to navigate solely with the keyboard. This is perfectly doable, works very well on Windows and some Linux desktops, and it will give you a good appreciation and understanding of good vs. bad UI design -- because there are a thousand small things that aren't noticeable when pointing and clicking.
This doesn't mean just using the shell. Any competently-written GUI can be navigated by keyboard alone.
It'll make you faster, you'll learn a lot of "power user" shortcuts and things, and it makes you better at designing software that is accessible to users with sensory or motor disabilities.
Your first designs are going to be horrible, no way around it, just keep going, compare, reflect, learn, and things will get better over time.
If you can get feedback from experienced designers that will help a lot.
As to resources; Others mentioned Don Norman's book (and nngroup.com), great suggestions. I would also spend time looking at good designs and trying to figure out what makes them good. Just ask "why" about everything. "Why is this button this color, why is it this size, why is it placed here? etc etc".
Good design is about achieving goals, the better you get at focussing on those goals, mainly by asking "why", the better your understanding of design and your own designs will become.
Don’t Make me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug
https://builtformars.com/ UX case studies
https://www.nngroup.com/ UX analyses and articles
Coursera has some UX courses you can audit for free