A UX Primer in Powers of Ten

Updated November 19, 2017

I created this list in 2014 as I found myself emailing long lists of annotated resources to new designers. I was fortunate to have a lot of help and mentorship when I started in UX. I wanted to bundle it and give it to everyone at the beginning of their career. This post is that bundle.

My lens on experience design was shaped strongly by three individuals: Jaime Levy, Lane Goldstone and Arturo Perez. Jaime taught me to approach design with the mind of an entrepreneur. Lane taught me that design is not about being a visionary, but about helping your team build products that matter. Arturo taught me how to cull the internet for the latest innovations and methodologies.

There is a wealth of information on design — so much that it can be overwhelming. There is no one process or approach to design. Designers inevitably develop an approach to their work but the word “process” implies some sort of linear predictability. As Wren Lanier pointed out:

“Doing great work isn’t about perfecting your process, it’s about maintaining a practice.”

In order to build a practice, you have to learn a range of skills and techniques. Whether you are learning about design, pursuing a career in design or hiring a designer, seek a diverse range of influences. Here are some of mine…

Ten People to Follow on Twitter

Twitter is my home base for design ideas and events. I keep a running list, but these ten regularly post valuable thinking on design and technology.

1. Lane Goldstone is an incredibly thoughtful, multi-talented designer founder who shares advice and resources. I owe most of my career to Lane.
2. Kamilah Taylor is an engineer and community leader. She speaks all over the world and talks about leading edge technology and trends.
3. Janice Fraser is a brilliant facilitator and an inspired product maker.
4. Kate Rutter is a tactile designer, teacher, and skilled visual notetaker. Her podcast with Laura Klein is hilarious and informative.
5. Brad Frost is the designer and front-end developer behind the foundational Atomic Design framework.
6. Kristy Tillman is Head of Communication Design at Slack and the co-founder of the incredible Detroit Water Project. She talks about design and leadership.
7. Andi Galpern runs CascadeSF and shares events, new projects and opportunities.
8. David Bland helps companies move faster through iteration and experimentation.
9. Victor Zapanta is a designer at 18F who makes accessing government information and services easier.
10. David Holl is a designer and strategist. He talks about design philosophy and culture.

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”

- Charles Eames

Ten Books

These are a few design books that I return to often – either because they speak to our current work at hand or because they resonate beyond trends. If you’re looking for more, O’Reilly, A Book Apart, Wiley and Rosenfeld are well-known publishers of design and technology books.

1. Patterns of the Earth by Bernhard Edmaier and Angelika Jung-Hüttl — Beautiful aerial photographs depicting textures, surfaces and forms

2. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman — An overview of strategic design and why it matters

3. The whole “A Book Apart” series — especially Responsive Web Design and Mobile First – Short, tactical books on web design and development

4. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries — Case studies in continuous learning while building companies and products

5. UX Strategy by Jaime Levy —A guidebook for being both business and customer-centric as you develop products

6. User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley — Techniques for guiding vision and design

7. Microinteractions by Dan Saffer — The importance of well-designed details

8. Resonate by Nancy Duarte — Explains the importance of storytelling for writing and speaking

9. Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz — An important reality check

10. Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace — Lessons in running and being part of a creative team

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

- Albert Einstein

Ten Blogs

MailChimp and Google Ventures make a big effort to pen useful ideas. Everyone I mentioned on my Twitter list above blogs about their ideas and these ones below are my staple reads beyond that.

1. A List Apart — Digital leaders sharing their best practices
2. Airbnb’s Engineering and Data Science Blog — Airbnb is leading the way in democratizing data (which is, of course, critical for design)
3. Pablo Stanley — Pablo illustrates common design scenarios
4. Tech, Design and Inclusion — John Maeda blogs about inclusive design in a newsletter
5. Julie Zhou — Facebook’s VP of Product Design reflects on her practice
6. Google Ventures – Useful exercises and techniques
7. Luke W — Luke is the originator of “mobile first” and an authority on web forms and conversion
8. BLDGBLOG – Geoff Manaugh covers interdisciplinary design
9. Both Sides of the Table — Mark Suster illuminates how venture capitalists think
10. Moby’s Architecture Blog — He hasn’t updated this in a while but the archives are worth reviewing

“I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.”

- Spike Lee

Ten Films

Some of these films are about the design process and others are design inspiration. I am partial to biographical documentaries on architects and product designers as well as experimental films. You can learn something from any film. I didn’t put Powers of Ten on this list but that’s obvious given the title of this post.

1. Infinite Space on John Lautner’s work building mid-century modern architecture
2. Graphic Means — the history of graphic design
3. Art & Copy — the commercial genius of the advertising industry
4. All of Gary Hustwit’s films — Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized
5. The behind the scenes docs on the art department from Blade Runner
6. This interview with Charles Eames which explains design in five minutes
7. Visual Acoustics on Julius Shulman’s work shooting mid-century modern architecture
8. Style Wars — hip hop culture filmed in its early days
9. Herb & Dorothy on the couple who collected and fostered modern American art
10. F for Fake — Orson Welles last film exploring the value of art and truth

“I’ve been imitated so well, I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.”

- Jimi Hendrix

Ten Grids

Grids that web designers use today are often derived from the newspaper but grids originate in urban design. Since it’s much harder to build a city than a mobile app, I figured these grids might serve as some inspiration.

1. Roman grid of Timgad

2. Fused grid of Calgary

3. Paris – the non-grid grid

4. Jeffersonian grid of New York

5. Miesian grid of IBM

6. Filmic grid – the rule of thirds

7. Newspaper grid

8. 960 grid

9. Responsive grid

10. Atomic Web Design – flexible system in atoms, molecules and organisms

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

- Buckminster Fuller

Ten Museums

Museums allow us to reflect on our current time and aesthetic in a way the internet does not. The Hammer Museum in LA is my favorite because of their support for living artists and active dialogue but every museum I visit gives me something new to consider. Make sure you bring $100 to pay for the beautiful, twenty pound design books you can’t live without from the museum bookstore.

1. Hammer Museum in LA
2. A+D Museum in LA
3. PS1 in New York
4. Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
5. High Museum of Art in Atlanta
6. Museo Galileo in Florence
7. Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
8. de Young in San Francisco
9. SFMOMA in San Francisco
10. Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle

“A good designer may not have all the answers, but he knows which questions to ask.”

- Rudy Duke

Ten Publications

Great news. Design magazines and books are tax-deductible — for now. I subscribe to Works That Work and Harvard Design Magazine because I prefer to read about non-digital design. A great way to discover new resources is to check out designernews.co.

1. Fast Co. Design — Design, product and business news
2. Smashing Magazine — The latest on web technology
3. CLOG —Previously design focused, CLOG is a rich exploration on a theme
4. Works That Work — International design innovation and thinking
5. Design Milk — Modern design and interiors
6. Arch Paper — I’ve been subscribing to this for years just so I know when Thom Mayne’s next building is breaking ground
7. net magazine — Similar to Smashing but in print
8. Communication Arts — Ad agency-style glossy inspiration
9. Design Observer — Graphics, urbanism, pop culture
10. Harvard Design Magazine — You could kill a turtle with this magazine and it makes you look quite literary and fancy

“Good design is good business.”

- Thomas Watson, Jr.

Ten Designs

While it’s helpful to go broad at first, it can be rewarding to dive deeply into a designer’s work. For me, the Eames have been a constant source of inspiration. Researching some of their early drawings is enlightening. Find designers whose work makes the world better and understand as much as you can about them.

1. Otis’s safety elevator – an invention that powers skyscrapers to this day

2. Edison’s light bulb – a famous example of disruptive success out of multiple failures and an evolving design that continues to be relevant

3. The Brooklyn Bridge – an impressive feat of engineering (completed by the wife of the lead engineer after his paralysis)

4. Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK – a graceful work of aerospatial architecture poised in motion

5. Saul Bass’s title sequence for Psycho – possibly creepier than the movie itself

6. Eames lounge chair – perhaps the only comfortable chair made by the famous couple, certainly the most remembered

7. Koolhaas’s CCTV – a subtle shift in common geometries that both challenge and embrace the urban environment

8. Hunter 40′ sailboat – a vessel that takes microinteractions to the next level

9. Yves Behar’s Jambox – interaction design with sound and texture

10. iPhone – are you holding one right now?

“Don’t try to be original; just try to be good.”

- Paul Rand

Ten Classes and Conferences

Many of these classes are offered online and the first three on the list are free. Aside from Coursera, Skillshare and Treehouse are great places to learn about design and development. Local meetups are the best way to meet other designers and find job opportunities.

1. Scott Klemmer’s Human-Computer Interaction Class
2. Karl Ulrich’s Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society Class
3. Stanford d. School classes
4. Your local Type Thursday chapter
5. Your local IxDA chapter
6. Smashing Conf
7. An Event Apart
8. Growth Hackers (This one is for more mid-level to senior designers, but I would love to see more designers at this conference)
9. Balanced Team and nearly anything a member of the BT produces
10. Any class or workshop taught by Lane Halley, Jaime Levy or Chris Chandler

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

- Aristotle

Ten Podcasts

What’s that? You have a long commute and don’t have time to read the million things I put in this list? How convenient that people make podcasts!

1. What’s Wrong with UX? — Kate Rutter and Laura Klein bring humor and deep expertise while discussing UX and drinking
2. User Defenders — Jason Ogle interviews a range of design leaders
3. Note to Self — Exploration of our relationship with technology
4. 99 Percent Invisible — One of two podcasts on this list you could listen to with non-designers
5. Design Matters — Interviews with creatives
6. Under the Influence — How and why advertising works
7. Rock Hard Ads — Advertising news and critique
8. Song Exploder — Musicians unpack their process for one song
9. Let’s Make Mistakes — Mike Monteiro and friends discuss design
10. KCRW’s DnA — Design and architecture news

“Modernism does not mean minimalism, that contemporary does not forsake tradition, and technology does not mean abandon people and senses.”

- Tord Boontje

One of the things I love about design is that there is so much to learn. Luckily, there are now so many wonderful, free resources online. I listed some of them above but I encourage you to find and share anything you find valuable. If you are just getting started in design, one way you can build your own audience is by sharing what you are learning.

The beauty of being a designer is that you don’t have to know all the answers. You just need to know what questions to ask.

The title of this post is a reference to the Eames film.