Degreeless.design

“To be a good designer you must be a good engineer in every sense: curious, inquisitive.”— Charles Eames, 1949

A Quick Intro

This is (almost) everything I learned in design school in one website. Getting a design degree is not a waste of time. In fact, it's one of the best decisions I've ever made. However, most people aren't as lucky to have the sort of professors I did. Some people don't have the access, the ability, or the time to go to school for this stuff. And frankly, that 10-week design intensive is not going to make you a fantastic designer right out of the gate. You need something more.

You have to be self-sufficient. You have to be hungry to learn.

That's why this website exists. This is a list of everything I've found useful in my journey of learning design, and an ongoing list of things I think you should read. This is for budding UX, UI, Interaction, or whatever other title designers.

The Basics

You have to start from the beginning. You have to understand the basics. Learn to love type, learn to navigate the pen tool, figure out colors, learn from the past, and build up a reservoir of empathy.

Foundations

Font Review Journal
Learn to Kern
Learn the Pen Tool‍
Ultimate Guide to Color
Coolors: Palette Generator
Contrast and Meaning

Building Empathy

Laws of UX
Behavioral Economics 101
Gestalt Principles in UI
Usability Hueristics
Cognitive Walkthrough

Accessibility Manifesto
Accessible Color
Design for Friction

Humane by Design

Design History

Helvetica Documentary
Dezeen

Starting UX

Okay, hopefully now you know the essentials. We'll learn more as we go, but let's jump into the UX world. The absolute most important thing for you to learn and master is process. This will be the value you bring to any project you work on. Tools change & trends die. Master process over all.

Building Blocks

Laws of UX
Behavioral Economics 101
Gestalt Principles in UI
Usability Heuristics
Cognitive Walkthrough

Process

IDEO Design Kit
IDEO Field Guide
6 Steps to HCD process
Product Design process
Design Thinking
Design Sprints vs Agile
GV Design Sprints
Product Thinking

Research

Survey Methods

Deliverables

UX Checklist
Complete List of Deliverables
Storyboarding 101
Interaction Flows

Designing Interfaces

‍Human Interface Guidelines
Material Design Guidelines‍
Optical Effects in UI
UI Crash Course

Advanced Resources

Once you've gotten your footing with the basics, learned some of the vocab, and figured out a bit more what interests you; try to absorb as much as you can from high quality sources. These should get you going.

High Quality Content

Design Better
Ask Playbook
Make Book
AirBnB Design
Design.Google
UXPin Free Ebooks

Link Collections

Product Disrupt
Principles.Design‍
Collection of Design Languages
Ultimate Guide to Product & Design in Tech

Designing Beyond Screens

Amazon Voice UI Guide
Google Voice UI Guide‍
Algorithms.Design
AI and the future of UX
Principles of AI Design
Design for multiple devices

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Books

"There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book." — Will Smith

I'm a huge advocate for design books. These should be huge piece of your design education. Some of these have theory, some of these have practical tips, but none are just pretty pictures

Inspiration

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work." — Chuck Close

But sometimes, we need inspiration. And it's always a good idea to have your ear to the ground; watch the trends, predict them, respond to them, and know what's happening in the design world.

Curated Articles

An ongoing collection of articles from around the web, written by all sorts of people. Follow these people, investigate further, and ask questions.