Pretty much every single day I get a tweet, email, or in person request for information on how to get started in the field of user experience. I’ve recently had a few people reach out to me even asking me to mentor them throughout the process. Given that I often find myself repeating the same answers over and over again, I decided to put all of my resources in a single blog post so that folks could easily access a consolidated version of my advice.
So you wanna be a user experience designer?
The best way to learn a new language is to go to a country where it’s spoken and immerse yourself in the confusion. Soon the unfamiliar will become familiar, and before you know it you’ll be fluent.
If you’re interested in getting to know more about user experience, I recommend doing the same. You may choose to simply understand the terminology, or become conversant. You might later decide to tackle some of the more complex concepts.
There are many steps to the process, but I am starting with Resources because I believe you need a great arsenal before kicking off any journey. In future posts I’ll discuss:
- Guiding Principles
- Process
- Tools
- Transitioning from other careers
- Practice Landscape
…as well as any other topics that come up along the way.
I have organized the resources below in what I perceive to be lightest to deepest engagement — publications and blogs, books, local events, organizations, mailing lists, webinars, workshops, conferences, and schooling.
DISCLAIMER: These are my personal recommendations, and plenty of people will disagree with me on many points, I’m sure. But this is what has worked for me — the people/places/events/organizations that have kept my interest throughout my schooling and career — and where I believe anyone who wants to immerse themselves in user experience should start their journey. Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.
UX Books
UX Primer
- The Design of Everyday Things
by Don Norman
- Don’t Make Me Think
by Steve Krug
Design Thinking
- Sketching User Experiences
by Bill Buxton
- Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
by Don Norman
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
by Alan Cooper
Strategy
- Subject To Change
by Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, and David Verba
Process
- The Elements of User Experience
by Jesse James Garrett
- About Face 3
by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and David Cronin
- A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
Principles
- Designing for the Social Web
by Joshua Porter
- Designing Interfaces
by Jenifer Tidwell
- Designing Visual Interfaces
by Kevin Mullet
- Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (the Polar Bear book)
by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
- Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web by Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella
- Designing Web Navigation by James Kalbach
- Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski
Activities
- Usability Engineering
by Jakob Nielsen
- Handbook of Usability Testing by Jeffrey Rubin and Dana Chisnell
- Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky
Documentation
- Communicating Design
by Dan Brown
Extra Credit
by S. M. CaseyUX Blogs
- Konigi by Michael Angeles
Tips, tools and techniques for being a better user experience designer
- Disambiguity by Leisa Reichelt
The ins and outs of designing a product with an existing, and passionate, community
- EverydayUX by Alex Rainert
A fresh look at the world around us through UX-tinted glasses
- Graphpaper by Christopher Fahey
Critical analysis of some of the toughest issues facing UX designers today
- inspireUX by Catriona Cornett
Cubical-wall worthy quotations from a variety of practitioners on how and why to create positive user experiences
- Bokardo – Social Design by Joshua Porter
For everything you need to consider when designing socially-focused stuff
- Logic + Emotion by David Armano
Reusable visualizations and valuable synthesis at the intersection of user experience design, marketing and business
- Putting People First by Experientia
A great resource for all things UX from around the globe
- Brain Sparks by User Interface Engineering (UIE)
Inside the brilliant minds of user research pioneer Jared Spool and his team
- Design for Service by Jeff Howard
Insights into all the ways companies need to be communicating with their customers, outside of their websites
- UX Booth by Redd Horrocks, Matthew Kammerer, David Leggett, and Andrew Maier
A group blog written by up-and-coming designers and developers with fresh perspectives on user experience design. They represent the next generation of our community
UX Publications
- Boxes and Arrows
Journal dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of the information architecture community
- interactions
Magazine including timely articles, stories, and content related to the interactions between experiences, people, and technology, published by the Association for Computing Machinery
- UXmatters
Insights and inspiration for the user experience community written by many distinguished practitioners
- Core77
Industrial Design content and community site – articles, discussions, interviews and resources
Local Events
- UX Book Club
- IxDA chapters
- UPA chapters
- IAI Local Groups
- SIGCHI chapters
- User Experience Meetups
- Information Architecture Meetups
- Lots more events listed at UXnet.org
Organizations
- Information Architecture Institute (IAI)
- Interaction Design Association (IxDA)
- Usability Professionals Association (UPA)
- User Experience Network (UXnet)
- Special Interest Group – Computer Human Interaction (ACM/SIGCHI)
Mailing lists
Webinars
- UIE’s Virtual Seminars
A monthly series of online seminars giving you the chance to hear the latest perspectives in the world of design from the field’s premier experts.
$129 each. 90 minutes. - Rosenfeld Media’s Future Practice Webinars
The cutting edge of contemporary user experience research and design methods and practices.
$99 each. 60 minutes. - Adaptive Path’s Virtual Seminars
$129 each. 75 minutes.
- Smart Experience online material
Workshops
- UIE Roadshow
In this full-day, in-depth seminar you’ll discover the key experience-design factors, analyze your team’s strengths and weaknesses, create an experience vision, and learn the role of delight.
- AdaptivePath’s UX Intensive
This four-day workshop series is for experienced professionals wanting to take their practice to the next level.
- Cooper U
A practical collection of courses that help product team members improve their effectiveness from early planning all the way through implementation.
Conferences
Inspirational
- Good Experience Live (GEL)
A conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms — in business, art, society, technology, and life.
- IDEA Conference
The world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners sharing the big ideas that inspire, along with practical solutions for the ways people’s lives and systems are converging to affect society.
- Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience (Mx)
Thought leaders from major corporations show you how smart and visionary management will help you successfully compete in a difficult economy.
Practical
- UIE’s User Interface Conference
Examining the biggest issues in the world of web design, information architecture, and usability.
- NN/g’s Usability Week
A three-day usability camp, a three-day intensive session on interaction design, and several specialized, day-long tutorials on core usability topics. Come for as few or as many days as you want.
- UPA
Tutorials, workshops, Experienced Practitioners program, then two and a half days packed with presentations, Idea Markets, and opportunities to network with other user experience professionals.
Mixed
- IxDA Interaction Conference
Three days of inspirational and tactical sessions geared at anyone who practices Interaction Design, as well as a day of pre-conference workshops.
- IA Summit
The premier gathering place for information architects and other user experience professionals. Two days of pre-conference sessions, two keynotes and over 50 presentations.
- Adaptive Path’s UX Week
A mix of inspiring talks from recognized thought leaders and hands-on workshops delivering takeaway skills, this event delivers for user experience professionals at all levels — directors, managers, and practitioners.
- UIE’s Web App Summit
The four-day Summit includes two days of intensive full-day workshops and two more days of featured presentations from world-renown experts, to give you fresh perspectives and new insights on today’s web app design challenges.
- UX Australia
3-day user experience design conference, with inspiring and practical presentations, covering a range of topics about how to design great experiences for people.
- UX London
A unique three-day event combining inspirational talks with in-depth workshops presented by some of the industry’s biggest names.
Academic
- ACM’s CHI
The premier international conference for the field of human-computer interaction.
Schooling
Human Computer Interaction
- Human Computer Interaction Institute
at Carnegie Mellon University
(where I received a bachelor’s and master’s degree) - Master of Science in Information – HCI Specialization
at University of Michigan
- Full list of HCI degree programs
Interaction Design
- Master of Design in Interaction Design
at Carnegie Mellon University
- Master of Fine Arts in Interaction Design
at School of Visual Arts
(starting fall 2009) - Undergraduate minor in Interaction Design
at Savannah College of Art and Design
Misc
- Interactive Telecommunications Program
at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts
- Institute of Design
at Illinois Institute of Technology
Related Posts:
- So you wanna be a user experience designer — Step 2: Guiding Principles November 23, 2009 | 54 comments
- Follow-up to “You’re not a user experience designer if…” June 7, 2011 | 8 comments
- The User Is Not Like Me May 4, 2012 | 20 comments
- Interaction-design.org’s Encyclopedia is live! February 1, 2011 | 3 comments
- Silver Winner of the Inaugural User Experience Awards June 7, 2011 | 1 comments
Nice list of user experience design resources! Thanks for sharing. I'm sure many people will find these very helpful.
Great set of resources Whitney! Thanks for taking the time to post this, much appreciated :)
This is a really helpful (and overwhelming) set of resources. Thanks for posting.
One day at a time!
Definitely recommend adding Kim Goodwin's “Designing for the digital age” to the book list – seminal. Great Post whitney. Going to be NYC this weekend any recommendations for current shows or goings on?
Awesome!… such a great list of resources! I am personally very excited for this series, as I am trying to delve more and more in the UX world.
thanks!
~ Aaron I
Amazing as always! This is like one stop UX resource shopping.
Aww thanks! :)
First off, phenomenal list of resources here. Kudos to you!
Also, I'd recommend following prominent UX people on twitter. Here's the list I came up with a little while ago (far from perfect but maybe a good starting point).
Wow. Ditto, great list.
D'oh… forgot the link to the UX peeps on Twitter: http://www.openthewindow.net/?p=506
For “History” people might want to read Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interactions-Bi…
Don't worry about the full list of HCI programs. Just go to UM (go blue!)
A book that's been on my To Read list for quite some time. Thank you!
Great list Whitney–these are all excellent resources! A couple of books/primers I'd add are 'Designing the Obvious' and 'Designing the Moment' by Robert Hoekman (@rhjr). I found these both to be super useful for quick reference, In terms of schooling Simon Fraser University's new School of Interactive Arts + Technology here in Vancouver offers an undergraduate degree program in Informatics.
I'd also agree with @dpan that following smart IA/IxDA/UX folks on Twitter is a good idea. Aside from the nudges towards useful content and resources I get almost everyday there are some really helpful, wonderful people in this industry who are welcoming to newbs and generally willing to answer silly questions :)
Lynne, thanks for this. I look forward to picking up these books.
Also, I'll definitely posting a list of UX practitioners on Twitter. That has absolutely been a powerful resource for me; I feel the people that make up the practice deserve their own post.
Great list, Whitney, adding to my bookmarks. . . but one nit: While CHI has a long-time reputation as a conference for academics and researches, it isn't. Over the last few years there has been an increasing presence of UX practitioners. Take a look at the program for this year's conference, you might be surprised: http://www.chi2009.org/Attending/CHI09Program.pdf.
At the very least you could move CHI into the “mixed” category of conferences.
Disclosure: I'm an officer in ACM SIGCHI, the sponsoring organization.
Thanks for your input, Fred. Good to hear that CHI is becoming more practical. I think unfortunately it's been inaccessible to practitioners for some time.
What a wonderful list of resources. I love “Set phases on stun” book – one of my favourites.
Thanks for taking the time to put these together.
Excellent list! I look forward to more in this series. Another resource, of sorts, is to use and observe all the free apps out there: Flickr, Mint.com, all Google apps, del.icio.us, etc.
There are a few blogs missing from the list (cough) :P
http://www.nickfinck.com/
ok, fine, maybe my blog wasn't good enough to make the cut.. but UXarray is good too!
http://www.uxarray.com/
And lets not forget the UX Book Club events:
http://uxbookclub.org/
The UX workshop events are also pretty good:
http://www.theuxworkshop.tv/
Thanks, Nick! UX Book Club is definitely on the top of my list (and listed under local events). Thanks for sharing the other links.
Thanks for the Link-love, Mr. Finck.
Thanks for the killer resource, Ms. Hess
Whitney, what a great collection of resources! I'd highly recommend people take a look at Johnny Holland – http://johnnyholland.org – for some interesting reading in the interaction design and user experience space.
Cheers
Steve
Thanks for the link, Steve. I happened upon one of your articles recently and made a mental note, but forgot to come back to it. How long have you been publishing it?
Kent State University has a Master of Science in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management (IAKM). There are a few different focuses you can take – information architecture, knowledge management, and usability. Great faculty and just an amazing experience and learning environment.
I had no idea! Thanks, Tonia.
Thanks for putting this list together — very helpful indeed!
However, your list of schools is (understandably) very US-centric. There are a number of schools in Europe with IxD programs, including the Royal College of Art in London, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (Denmark), Umeå Institute of Design (Sweden), Malmö University (Sweden), TU Delft (The Netherlands), etc. And many more offering HCI courses.
Cheers,
Martin
Martin, I sincerely appreciate you listing some schools outside of the US. I have much less familiarity with those, and though I knew I was leaving them out, I don't feel that I know enough about each to make recommendations. Glad you posted here.
Well, I'm not sure I'm particularly qualified either, but these are the ones whose names keep coming up.
Why is there not a single reference to The Humane Interface by Jeff Raskin?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface
These are just my personal sources of inspiration, and while I'm well aware of Raskin's work it isn't something that I directly call upon. Thank you for mentioning it here.
Yesterday I came across another pretty interesting title:
Search User Interfaces – http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/
The book is still not published on paper, but the online version is freely available.
I've read just excerpts of the book and my first impressions are that this is very very comprehensive work on Search UI – so many cases and usages have been covered.
Thanks for this list, Whitney. I'll be adding a few more to the Amazon wishlist then…
I've just gotten Designing Web Interfaces by Bill Scott and Theresa Neil and it looks good.
Yikes, I have so much reading to do!
Awesome Whitney, looking forward to the rest of the series.
I *WAS* going to read this, but I am afraid the title put me off.
I did “want to” but I discovered after reading the title that I didn't “wanna” any longer.
And the value of that comment is……where?
Coming at this from a design strategy/design thinking perspective – I think a good compliment to Subject To Change by Peter Merholz would be Design Management: Managing Design Strategy, Process and Implementation by Kathryn Best and Design Management by Brigitte Borja de Mozota. Also, I would add Ideo to the blog/website listings.
This is great Whitney! If it's not comprehensive, I think it's pretty darn close–and the balance of making it complete rests with the reader, anyhow. One that I hope folks discover if it's not currently on their blogroll: http://www.alistapart.com.
Your notes about higher ed interaction design programs left me thinking. The program at CMU evolved from its top-ranked design and computer science programs. I'm curious what other schools offer excellent education on user experience and designing experiences without actually labeling them as such; I'd bet there are other courses and programs buried at RISD, Washington University, and IIT that just quietly live within their respective design programs, surfacing only in self-designed majors. Perhaps a topic for another post!
Great job on putting the list together. I have read a lot of the books you mention, but I certainly will look into a few others. Thanks!
Awesome list and Great Job!!!!
Thanks so much..
Wow! Bookmarked this post.
Thank you for taking the time to put this awesome resource together and sharing it.
Thanks a lot. I have be going around on this big big web searching for this. Thanks that you put it all in one place.
I am going to benefit a lot from this.
Really helpful list, BIG thanks to you!
Hi Whitney, I am a very newer in UX, i am wondering if I should consider the “Windows/Mac/Java UX Guide” as a premier books?
I'm afraid I don't know which book you're referring to. Link?
Uhmm i mean the guides for Windows/Mac/ platform application designing.Links as:For Mac platform: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserEx… Java platform: http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/ed2/book/For Windows platform: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa51125… do you think the requirement being familiar with these user experience guides for a UX newbie?
Hi Whitney, what an excellent article! I'm glad you mentioned my favourite Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things and The Design of Everyday Things (and Steve's Don’t Make Me Think), I think everybody can find here lots of study materials. Thank you!