LAURA YARROW

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  • Home
  • Medium Articles
  • Resources
    • For new designers
  • Background & Skills
    • Case studies
    • My Skills
    • Speaking
    • UX Coffee
  • Contact

resources for new designers

introduction

As someone spending their time mentoring people in User Experience (UX) and the Human centred design (HCD) industry in general, I noticed that a lot of the same questions kept re-appearing. ​I have a core set of resources I have been giving out, copied and pasted from a word doc somewhere - not a very helpful way to store these really useful bits of info! So I've done my best to collate them all here.

Note: This is not meant to be one massive "list to end all lists" - this is a highly curated "cream of the crop", designed to not overwhelm the new starter, and to give them the best accelerator into their learning in human centred design. I've also tried to include resources for those that are switching careers - another common route into HCD.

general resources and primers to the field

Resource
Author
Good for
Nielsen Norman Group in general, and their explanation of UX here 
Multiple
The definitive source for all things usability and UX design.
Interaction design foundation
Multiple
Excellent courses and articles.
The IDEO designkit
IDEO
Methods to try out in your process.
Intro to UX and accessible design
FutureLearn
Learning UX at your own pace.
Introduction to user experience
Marvel App
Granular detail on UX methods, processes and background.
Gibsons bankruptcy - a cautionary tale in innovation
Matt LeMay
A great storytelling approach to how to get user experience wrong

Soft skills​

Resource
Author
Good for
They're not soft skills, they're really hard skills
Rachel McConnell
Understanding a great breadth of soft skills, how to learn them
What is empathy?
Seung Chan Lim
Why empathy is important to UX and HCD
Generating focused ideas through practical empathy
Indi Young
Putting empathy and listening into practice
The difference between empathy and sympathy
Brene Brown
A quick video short
What great listeners actually do
Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman for HBR
Understanding levels of listening

Books​

Resource
Author
Good for
The design of everyday things
Don Norman
A good grounding of what user experience is and our interactions with the designed world
Moderating usability tests
Joe Dumas and Beth Loring
How to set up and run your own usability testing
The handbook of usability testing
Jeffrey Rubin and Dana Chisnell
How to set up and run your own usability testing
The elements of user experience
Jesse James Garrett
The famous layers of experience diagram
Don't make me think
Steve Krug
A great intro to HCD
Drive
Daniel H Pink
Understanding what motivates people
A more beautiful question
Warren Berger
How to ask great questions
Interviewing users
Steve Portigal
Improving your research and usability testing questions
The power of moments
Chip and Dan Heath
Understanding the importance of moments in the experience "narratives"
Think like an anthropologist
Matthew Engelk
Transferable thought processes from anthropology to research
Just enough research
Erika Hall
What research method to use, how much and when
Lean UX
Jeff Gothelf
Great for product teams trying to explore how to embed design into a digital and technical process
This is service design thinking
Marc Stickdorn
Getting started with service design - also see his two follow up books SD Doing and SD methods.
The empathy instinct
Peter Bazalgette
Understanding empathy in humans
Mental Models
Indi Young
Understanding what mental models are and how to work out users models
The UX team of one
Leah Buhley
Practical advice for lone UX-ers to get started and get buy-in

Articles, newsletters and publications

Resource
Author
Good for
UX Movement
Multiple
Current UX news
Dense Discovery
Kai Brach
A breadth of design articles
UX Design Collective
Multiple
Whats popular in design right now - every Monday 
UX Mastery
Multiple
It's community
Leisa's Newsletter
Leisa Reichelt
Intelligent and thoughtful articles
Quietstars newsletter
Adrian Howard
Variety of product and design related news
Paper Giant Newsletter
Paper Giant
Intelligent opinion on HCD
People Nerds
DScout
Great practitioner advice and guides

understanding your level​, interviewing & career progression

This section is all related to breaking into the industry, then measuring how you're doing once you're there. This includes interview and portfolio tips, courses, and what to do if you're changing career.
Resource
Author
Good for
Shaping design framework
Jason Mesut
Career progression, understanding the difference between different HCD disciplines
Clearleft personal development framework
Clearleft
The different skills expected at different career levels
5 steps to creating your UX Portfolio
NN Group
Great examples of portfolio content approaches
Portfolio workshop
Sarah Doody
Sarah specialises in UX portfolios and coaching - check out her free resources and articles
Switching to UX from another career
UX Beginner
If you have no relevant experience but want to get into UX
The researchers journey: levelling up as a user researcher
Dave Hora
Visualising a path for your research career
Here's what hiring managers look for in UX Design candidates
Rikke Friis Dam plus lots of hiring managers
Rikke has collected up lots of hiring managers opinions and strategies when hiring UX practitioners.

Getting buy-in from stakeholders for hcd

Resource
Author
Good for
Minimum viable research
Sarah Doody on Hackernoon
Knowing where to start with getting buy in
Tips from the experts on getting buy in for research and UX
Userzoom
A collection of techniques from thought leaders in the field, great examples.
Stop fighting over your research and get buy in for it instead
Alireza Mogharrab
Practical and actionable advice on persuading other people to listen to research.
A proven method for showing the value of good UX
Jared Spool
Step by step methods from a respected thought leader

podcasts

Resource
Author
Good for
User Defenders
Jason Ogle
Hearing from the thought leaders in design
99% Invisible
Roman Mars
Unusual and non-obvious design around you
Unusable Podcast
David and Andrew
A sideways look at usability 
Hidden Brain
NPR
A deeper look at humans and what makes us tick

setting up a ux/hcd process

Resource
Author
Good for
What is your UX process?
Nadeeka Athukorala
Learning the basic UX process steps
An actionable guide to setting up your UX process
Career Foundry
Those starting out from scratch in UX
Framing a study
Indi Young
Insights on how to frame a research study
When to use which research method
NN Group
The "at a glance" quadrant diagram of methods
Seriously, you need to start documenting your UX work
Sarah Doody on InVision
How to create a bit of documenting what you did, and what to document

communities and collectives

Resource
Author
Good for
ResearchOps
Multiple (originator: Kate Towsey)
The slack group, meeting new people, learning up to date info on the operations side of research.
Hey, you've reached the end! But don't go yet, how about taking a look at my articles on Medium?
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