Learning

Design & UX

Interface design, accessibility and research, for people who build things.

Where to start

Most developers do not need to learn design so much as the handful of rules that stop work looking untrained — spacing, type scale and contrast. Practical Typography covers a surprising amount of that in an afternoon. Accessibility is not a nicety; WCAG is a legal requirement in a growing number of places.

Principles4

  • Laws of UXStart hereFree

    The named heuristics — Fitts, Hick, Jakob — each on one page with an example. A shared vocabulary for design arguments.

    Jon Yablonskilawsofux.com

  • Decades of usability research, published free. The evidence behind most received wisdom in UX.

    Nielsen Norman Groupnngroup.com

  • Practical TypographyStart hereFree

    Read "Typography in ten minutes". It will improve every document you produce for the rest of your life.

    Matthew Butterickpracticaltypography.com

  • A complete design system with the reasoning published alongside it. Worth reading even if you never use Material.

    Googlem3.material.io

Accessibility3

  • The standard itself, plus the plain-language quick reference. Increasingly a legal requirement, not advice.

    W3Cw3.org

  • WCAG turned into things you can actually check. The practical entry point.

    The A11Y Projecta11yproject.com

  • How to build a tab set, a modal or a menu that actually works with a screen reader. Component by component.

    Heydon Pickeringinclusive-components.design

Tools and training3

  • Figma LearnStart hereFree

    Official tutorials for the tool most product teams now use by default.

    Figmahelp.figma.com

  • A structured career-change programme. Thorough, well regarded, and a genuine time commitment. Linked at Coursera because grow.google sends non-US visitors to a country page instead.

    Googlecoursera.org

  • Type ScaleStart hereFree

    Pick a modular type scale and see it applied. Fixes the most common reason a page looks amateur.

    Type Scaletypescale.com

About this list

10 resources, checked automatically every week so dead links do not sit here unnoticed. Nothing on this page is sponsored and none of these links pay us — which is the only reason a recommendation on it is worth anything. Every link goes to the original source, and we take nothing with you when you leave.

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