Free Resources to Kickstart your UX Journey
Recently, many people have been asking me my secret of breaking into the field of UX design without any formal design credentials. When I got my first UX design job, I was an economics major and I had no graphic design or illustration experience. During my UX journey, I mostly relied on 2 key resources to self-learn UX: Youtube videos and books. For this post, I will focus on the Youtube videos and the channels that helped me because they are free, accessible and resources.
Key Topics: Design Process - UX Design - Business Design
Design Process
“Creativity is nothing but the way to solve new problems.” — Diana Santos, Product Strategist and Manager at Intelia
1. Yves Béhar : Why Designers Should Be In Love With The Process
Fuseproject founder Yves Béhar, the creator of the Jawbone headset and the $100 laptop, shares the seven principles that define his unique approach to the design process. His vision is one of “holistic making” in which the designer is involved from beginning to end — from defining the business model to designing the product to manufacturing to marketing.
2. Marc Stickdorn: Service Design Thinking
Marc Stickdorn, worldly-renowned service design expert, believes that service design isn’t only about designing an experience for the customers but also balancing the expectation of the customers with the Emotional Journey to the optimum level as well.
3. Becoming Leonardo: How Great Designers Think
How do great designers think? Imagine if you could crawl inside the minds of great designers to see what makes them tick: how they go about solving difficult problems, how they deal with adversity, and how they ultimately pull it all together to create successful design. What would you see?
4. How to design a library that makes kids want to read
When Michael Bierut was tapped to design a logo for public school libraries, he had no idea he was embarking on a years-long passion project. In this often hilarious talk, he recalls his obsessive quest to bring energy, learning, art and graphics into these magical spaces where school librarians can inspire new generations of readers and thinkers.
5. Designing a Brand That Even Non-Designers Can Work With
Natasha Jen, partner at Pentagram, describes the process of designing brand style guide that anyone non designers can work with.
UX Design
“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” — Steve Jobs
1. UX Design Process: Mental Modeling Framework and How To & Tips
**Personal Favorite**
Nicole is a User Experience Designer passionate about technology startups, cars, education & music. Based in Los Angeles CA., she is a User Experience Designer @ Iconmobile, an award-winning mobile design agency that connects brands with their target audience in the most direct and engaging way possible through the devices people love most & always have with them.
2. Julie Zhuo: How a Facebook Designer Thinks
Julie Zhuo, VP of product design at Facebook, describes how the development of new features starts with three questions: What people problem are we solving? How do we know it’s a real problem? And how will we know if we’ve solved it? Zhuo explains how answering those fundamental questions at the outset reveals the most urgent problems to tackle — and yields features that truly enhance user satisfaction.
3. Designing For Habit Change — BJ Fogg
BJ Fogg, behavior change expert and director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, shares his secrets to creating and designing compelling experiences to change habits and enable improved health outcomes.
4. Design Is Vision — The Power of Storytelling in Product Design
Designers help define the future by envisioning and crafting product experiences. They do this in a number of ways, whether it be by helping to create a strategic product vision through storytelling or through insights-driven, human-centered design. Designers articulate abstract ideas and give them form, by reconciling user needs with business goals and advanced technologies.
5. How Uber Designs the Future of Transportation
This video goes deep on discussing the challenges that come with designing at a scale so massive, it’s changing the way cities move, providing jobs for people around the world, and completely re-imaging the concept of logistics, and the methodologies designers at Uber use to tackle these challenges.”Business and Design
Business and Design
“Through entrepreneurship, we become better designers” — Ethan Imboden, Head of Venture Design at Frog Design
1. Designers, make this ONE mindset change in 2018
Bobby Ghoshal breaks down why the design industry has lost touch with customers and how specialized roles in design continue to fuel the problem. He also offers a mindset change to help your business in a BIG way this year.
2. Venture design: from zero to launch — Head of Venture Design at Frog
Design can propel your new venture — or send it into a tailspin. Whether you’re launching a startup, or a new line of business within a major corporation, this session will help you leverage design with lower risk, better outcomes and a shorter time to market.
3. Don Norman on Design Thinking (UVA Darden)
The author of the Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman) talks about how product failure due to radical innovation and the importance of business in design.
4. Design is Business — The Merging Reality of Design and Business
In this talk, Satyam shares many of his personally hard-won insights about the relationship of business and design. He will introduce key concepts such as “design premium”, “business risk”, and “impact ratios” that push the conversation further on how design can (and should!) drive business more effectively.
5. The design sprint: from Google Ventures to Google[x]
The design sprint is a process for prototyping and testing any product in 5 days. Using real-world examples, we’ll show how to move faster and increase the overall effectiveness (and happiness!) of your whole team. And we’ll offer techniques for teams of any size, from two-person startup to giant enterprise.
Youtube Channels
1. AIGA Design https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_oEd1TQbuVZzr_Kw73XDEQ
Full presentations from the AIGA Design Conference and tributes to the recipients of the AIGA Medal, a prestigious prize in the design profession.
2. high resolution **Personal Favorite** https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzBkNPSxw15qrW_Y8p-oCUw
Bringing clarity to how the best companies approach, communicate, and deploy design. Hosted by Bobby Ghoshal & Jared Erondu.
3. The Futur https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSkoolRocks
Empower creative entrepreneurs to thrive in the 21st century economy by providing tools and training.
4. Google Design https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClKO7be7O9cUGL94PHnAeOA
The Google Design channel features videos for designers about material design, design principles at Google, and Google Design events.
5. Complexity Labs https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCutCcajxhR33k9UR-DdLsAQ
Complexity Labs is an online resource dedicated to the area of complex systems providing a broad group of people with, information, research and learning content relating to this exciting new area
