This page collects links to blog posts, articles and books about how to apply UX design methods.
If you lack a basic understanding of user experience design and design thinking, see the resources at the bottom of this list.
Companion pages listed at right and also in the nav bar cover resources and insights related to lean startup logic/methods; product management; business development; marketing; and sales, among other topics.
If you lack a basic understanding of user experience design and design thinking, see the resources at the bottom of this list.
Companion pages listed at right and also in the nav bar cover resources and insights related to lean startup logic/methods; product management; business development; marketing; and sales, among other topics.
- Don't Make me Think by Steve Krug: this book provides a short introduction to UI design for web applications
- The book Hooked by Nir Eyal describes how to design "habit-forming" products
- My deck on UX design principles from my Product Management 101 course
- Jasper Liu summarizes variations of the Design Council's "Double Diamond" Design Model, which prescribes sequential cycles of problem finding and solution finding, each starting with divergent thinking and concluding with convergent thinking. This model, in my view, represents a synthesis of Design Thinking and the Lean Startup method, with DT covering problem finding and the divergent first half of solution finding, and LS providing the convergent second half. Steve Blank offers a contrary view, asserting that Lean Startup's customer development process differs from Design Thinking in that CD leads with a founder's product vision, whereas DT leads with an effort to identify unmet customer needs.
- Stop Worrying About the Cupholders and F***ing Ship It Already by Laura Klein
- 25 Principles of Mobile Site Design by Google's Multi-Screen Resources unit
- The Dribbblisation of Design is a critique of an overemphasis on visual design by Paul Adams
- Joshua Porter of Bokardo presents 19 principles of UI design and 18 principles of product design
- Mikael Cho on design tradeoffs between authenticity and elegance
- Facebook designer David Gillis on the role of emotion and logic in product design
- Facebook's Julie Zhuo on five common design mistakes
- Phil Sharp of UserTesting.com recounts lessons learned from 100,000 usability studies
- Userium's usability checklist
- 23 Questions for Early UI Design, a checklist from my Product Management 101 course
- 75 UI ideas from GoodUI.org
- Ten Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design - Jakob Nielsen
- Legendary designer Dieter Rams's ten principles for good design
- Joshua Porter lists principles of good UI design and product design
- ex-Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky on design choices that reduce friction for users
- Designing for iOS and Android Design Principles; SC Moatti on mobile app design imperatives
- 6 Tips for Building Coherent Site Navigation by Ben Barden
- Irene Au of Khosla Ventures on the attributes of great design
- Erik Kennedy offers some principles of visual design; Chloe Mason Gray recommends resources for mastering some visual design basics, e.g., color and font choices
- Timothy Smith on the importance of consistency in design
- Sam Goertler on why Asana's redesign succeeded
- Design Explosions compares design choices behind Google Maps and Apple Maps
- The book Sprint by Google Ventures' Jake Knapp, Johan Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz explains how to run a five-day product design sprint
- Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, by Elizabeth Goodman et al. This excellent book devotes a "how to" chapter to every customer research technique used by product designers and product managers
- My summary deck on early customer discovery research from my course, Product Management 101
- Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs is an HBS course note by Frank Cespedes, Steve Blank and Tom Eisenmann that reviews basic principles of early product/market research and offers practical guidance on how to apply several research techniques, including surveys, focus groups, and usability research ($7 at HBS Publishing store -- sorry -- but free to current HBS MBA students via Baker Library)
- UX Booth provides a introduction to UX research techniques
- Ten Tools for Design Thinking by UVA Darden School's Jeanne Liedtka provides an overview of research techniques for user-centered design
- Terrific collection of "How to/Why to" articles on many aspects of user-centered design by Google Ventures' John Zeratsky
- How Startups Can Learn More by Building Less by Braden Kowitz
- Seven tools for web design research from Six Revisions
- Five UX Research Pitfalls - Elaine Wherry
- Joshua Porter on personas and how to use them
- A Perfect Use for Personas by Laura Klein
- Rob Fitzpatrick's book, The Mom Test, provides practical guidance on how to avoid biased interviews
- Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez. This book does a great job of explaining how to conduct customer discovery interviews and also discusses how/when/why to use MVPs
- Cindy Alvarez on applying customer development techniques with different types of customers; on how to cope with the fact that research respondents' answer to "Do you want...?" is always "Yes!"; and "10 Things I've Learned" about customer development
- Customer Visits for Entrepreneurs, an HBS course note by Frank Cespedes that offers guidance on how to conduct customer discovery interviews
- My deck on Early Customer Research from my Product Management 101 course
- How to Structure Customer Development Interviews by Jason Evanish; Evanish outlines ways to recruit customer development interviewees
- How to Find and Interview Potential Customers by Elizabeth Yin
- 12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews by Giff Constable
- Justin Wilcox on interviewing potential customers to understand their needs; Whitney Hess on the same topic
- Ben Yoskovitz describes how and why to use the "day in a customer's life" technique
- The Power of Observation: How More Companies Can Have 'Aha' Moments by Ellen Isaac, discusses ethnographic research techniques
- Survey Monkey White Paper on Survey Design
- You Shouldn't Use a Survey If… by Cindy Alvarez
- Customer Interview Questions by Liffft. This post debugs a bunch of badly-worded survey questions
- Improve Your Startup's Surveys and Get Even Better Data by Elizabeth Farrell-Nunge
- Using Surveys to Validate Key Startup Decisions by Brent Chudoba
- Doing Market Research with Google's Keyword Tool by Andrew Chen
- John Willshire on when to use low vs. high fidelity prototypes
- Ultimate Guide to Website Wireframing by Cameron Chapman
- Legend's Nathan Barry offers tips on wireframing
- A primer from Six Revisions on wireframing
- Design firm slicedbread on when to use A/B testing vs. qualitative user research
- Eric Ries on the value of split test experiments and on macro vs. micro split testing in lean startups
- Steve Krug's book Rocket Surgery Made Easy is a short, practical, and funny guide to the basics of usability research
- My deck on usability testing from my Product Management 101 course
- Jakob Nielsen, Usability 101
- Nielsen Norman Group, Turn User Goals into Task Scenarios for Usability Testing
- Christine Perfetti, Usability Tests in a Nutshell, Part 3: Creating Tasks
- Steve Krug, Usability Test Script
- Kara Pernice, Talking with Participants During a Usability Test
- Jared Spool, Three Questions You Shouldn't Ask During User Research
- Tania Lang, Eight Lessons in Mobile Usability Testing
- Cindy Alvarez on what you will/won't learn from usability testing.
- Designer Whitney Hess on how to conduct usability research interviews.
- Creating Passionate Users blog on managing expectations and securing useful feedback with a product demo
- Laura Klein on how/when to use prototypes: "usable does not necessarily mean useful"
- Tiny Tests: User Research You Can Do NOW! by Laura Klein describes some easy usability research techniques
- Knapp on how to run an effective design critique
- UsabilityNet.org, Performance Testing
- Cole Derochie, Unbounce, Measure Twice, Cut Once: Introducing User Testing into Our Design Process
- Janice Redish, Six Steps to Ensure a Successful Usability Test
- Interview with Rolf Molich, Usability Testing Best Practices
- Will Schroeder, Observing What Didn't Happen
- Jaclyn Perrone on design critiques at Pivotal Labs
- 9 Rules for Running a Productive Design Critique, by Jake Knapp, focuses on internal presentations on product work in progress
- Facebook's Julie Zhuo on how to present designs
- Scott Berkun on how to run a design critique
- Scott Belsky on how to onboard new users
- Onboarding New Users is Harder Than You Think, by Nate Munger
- UserOnboard.com teardowns, by Samuel Hulick; Hulick offers guidelines for onboarding and explains why onboarding should start with a story; Hulick interviewed by Des Traynor; Hulick interviews 37signals' Ryan Singer
- User Onboarding Academy, by Jackson Noel; Noel explains why good onboarding is important and explains when early stage entrepreneurs can defer onboarding improvements
- Seven Onboarding Mistakes You Don't Want to Make by Bayram Annako
- Jacek Blaut presents 21 activation hacks
- Three-part series by Facebook's Julie Zhuo's explains what designers, PMs and engineers should know about each others' priorities: How to Work with PMs: A Cheat Sheet for Designers; How to Work with Designers: A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs (see also Don't Say This to a Designer by Juhi Chitra); and How to Work with Engineers: A Cheat Sheet for Designers
- Designing for Startups by Andrew Maier
- How Should a Startup Evaluate Design? by John Long
- Laura Klein on how to sell UX research to colleagues; differences between UX and UI design; and how MVPs relate to edge cases
- Startups, This is How Design Works by Hack Design is a primer on design in multiple lessons
- Some books that cover the process of assessing customer needs early in the product development process:
- The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper ("The Father of Visual Basic") makes the case for interaction designers playing a pivotal role in tech product development.
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
- The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley: Describes the design thinking processes employed at IDEO
- UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design, by Laura Klein
- Required Reading for Product Designers, a great collection of links from Robert Lenne
- Hacker News thread on how to learn design basics