UX Training Bookmarks 🐝

This collection contains the articles I found most-valuable on my journey into UX. Leaning heavily on the material here, I've also taught dozens of others the necessary skills and perspectives to land their first jobs in tech: most as UX Designers or Product Managers.

Good luck to you, friend. Share knowledge freely.

Curated by Leo Donahue. Last updated August 10, 2022.

Strategy & Thinking

Vocabulary

11 Optical Illusions Found in Visual Design – Prototypr

Jesse James Garrett: Visual Vocabulary for Information Architecture

Psychology of Design: 101 Cognitive Biases & Principles That Affect Your UX

A comprehensive (and honest) list of UX clichés

Blogs & Books

Daring Fireball

Archive of stories published by Google Design – Medium

(internet archive) ignore the code

Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition)

Decode and Conquer, Lewis C Lin

About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

Machine Learning Research at Apple

The State of UX in 2022

Brand & Visual Design

Accessibility

Accessible Brand Colors by Use All Five

Color Contrast Analyzer (CCA)

Accessible color for design systems just got easier

Contrast — Color Accessibility on the Mac App Store

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1

ADA Compliance - Toilet Stalls - ADA Compliance

Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List

WAVE Web Accessibility Tool

Accessibility - W3C

Gradients & Shadows

Josh Comeau - beautiful gradients

Josh Comeau - designing shadows

Tobias Ahlin - smooth box shadows

Brumm.af - Shadows

Assets

Illustrations | unDraw

TOP 15 Random Generators Of Abstract Backgrounds

Free vector illustrations - ira design

Subtle Patterns | Free textures for your next web project

Creating Amazing Illustrations in No Time with Sketch | Toptal

Unsplash | High-Resolution Photos

Download Stock Photos, Fonts & Templates with Envato Elements

UI Goodies: All the best resources for designers in one place.

Build a Portfolio

Philosophy & Skills

Get Your Shit Together – What Matters Most. Because hoping for the best is not a plan.

The portfolio case study is broken

How to quantify the value of design

User Research Resources from UserTesting

Honest Portfolio — UX Designer

Creating a UX Design Portfolio Case Study (Video)

What's the biggest lesson you've learned as a designer? | Dribbble Design Blog

Learn User Experience (UX) Design - Free Curriculum | Springboard

Landing a Job

How to: designer

Stop evaluating Product Designers like we're Visual Designers

The UX of Invisibility - Core77

How To Write A Cover Letter That Gets You A Job Interview

Design Gigs for Good

AIGA San Francisco | AIGA San Francisco

5 steps to master whiteboard design challenge - UX Collective

119 User Experience Interview Questions & Answers — Part 1

Why you should always negotiate your salary

How not to bomb your offer negotiation

8 Must-Haves in Your Freelance Design Contract (2021) | Dribbble

How to say no to your boss, meetings, and coworkers

Now that Google+ has been shuttered, I should air my dirty laundry on how awful the project and exec team was / Twitter

The Product Manager Interview: 164 Actual Questions and Answers

Amazon Product Manager Interview: A Step by Step Approach to Ace the Product Manager Interview at Amazon

5 emotionally intelligent ways to inspire your team every single day

What I wish I knew before I became a manager for the first time

These are the conversations you need to have as a new manager

What to highlight in your cover letter when applying for a remote job

Major Differences Between A Boss And A Leader In Side-By-Side Illustrations - DesignTAXI.com

4 behavioral interview tips and tactics

5 Things You Need To Do When Starting A New Job

7 Power Gaps That Keep Professionals From Thriving And Leading At Work

The questions to ask the interviewer during the interview

How to Care Less About Work - The Atlantic

Understanding Engineering

Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered

Autofill: What web devs should know, but don't - Cloud Four

How To Create an Ideal Design to Dev Workflow

AirBnB's JavaScript Style Guide

Google's "Lighthouse" website evaluator

Get Started with Web Accessibility | Salesforce Trailhead

Accessibility Reference | Tools for Web Developers | Google Developers

Responsive Design Testing

CSS Diner - Where we feast on CSS Selectors!

CodeCombat - Coding games to learn Python and JavaScript

Reading List

Fear is boring, and other tips for living a creative life

Why Nothing Works Anymore

My manager (who I loved) recently left my company. I summarized some of my notes from our many conversations. Here they are: I wish someone wrote this for me when I started

The Right and Wrong Way to Manage Up at the Office

'I felt so alone': What women at Microsoft face, and why many leave

State of Black America 2018 unpacks Silicon Valley's diversity problem

4 ways to show curiosity in job interviews (and why you need to)

5 management lessons that being a parent taught me

Marvel Film Writers Weigh In On How DC Could Make Its Movies More Popular

A Plea for AI That Serves Humanity Instead of Replacing It | WIRED

How Amy Hood Won Back Wall Street and Helped Reboot Microsoft

Tech careers: Lessons for start-ups from Amazon and Microsoft

How to Make Friends, According to Science - The Atlantic

How to solve complex problems (by not focusing on them)

Why the Confidence Gap Is a Myth

How Puberty Kills Girls' Confidence

Jeffrey Wright of HBO's 'Westworld' on His First Job

How bad maps are ruining American broadband - The Verge

The Ugly Truth Behind Moving To LA For Your Dream Job And How This Millennial Successfully Did It

What does it mean to live an authentic life?

An insider's perspective on Fukushima and everything that came after | Ars Technica

Ikea's Marcus Engman founds design agency Skewed Productions

New Ikea report finds that people don't feel at home in their homes

Why Am I So Tired All the Time? | GQ

Why do people hate vegans so much?

Voting Does Not Make Democracy

Facebook Says It Has Independently Verified How Much It Bungled Handling of Myanmar Genocide

Nighttime Satellite Images Shed Light On China's Building Spree In Developing Nations

Jony Ive discusses the importance and absurdity between leveraging 'curiosity' and the focus to 'solve problems' - 9to5Mac

Ask A Resume Writer: Do I Need to "Game" Applicant Tracking Systems to Land Interviews? - Glassdoor Blog

Arlie Hochschild: Housework Isn't 'Emotional Labor' - The Atlantic

The Death of Democratic Hong Kong, Distinct From Mainland China - The Atlantic

How the CIA Trains Spies to Hide in Plain Sight | WIRED

Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel lightens up - CNET

What’s a day in the life of a girl look like in 10 countries?

How Tinder Changed Dating for a Generation - The Atlantic

10 steps to take when talking politics with someone you disagree with - The Lily

Tying Allowance to Chores Could Kill Kids' Motivation to Help Out - The Atlantic

Affirmative Action Is About Reparations, Not Diversity - The Atlantic

Tales of an aging gamer: Why don't I pick up a controller as often as I used to? | Ars Technica

Robots don't need to have faces to communicate with humans, study find

Der Spiegel's Fabrication Scandal Has Global Repercussions - The Atlantic

Plants Use Flowers to Hear the Buzz of Animals - The Atlantic

How to become a better conversationalist

Why Marie Kondo's style of tidying up isn't for everyone - Vox

Want To Build A Global Brand From Africa? Here's How.

Mentoring Matters: Three Essential Elements Of Success

To curb climate change, we have to suck carbon from the sky. But how?

Why are airports still so bad?

Why being wrong is good

Maynard Webb's advice on becoming an inspiring leader

How Opt-In Ads Catch Consumer Attention and Drive Home Brand Intention

Why Women Have to Wait in Longer Bathroom Lines Than Men Do - The Atlantic

How Tim Cook's Data Broker Registry Might Actually Work | WIRED

The complex reasons humans are obsessed with pressing buttons — Quartz

'Ugly Produce' Subscription Boxes Have Ignited a Food War - The Atlantic

Facebook's 'Friendly Fraud' — report reveals social media knowingly scammed children as Zuckerberg publishes WSJ column - 9to5Mac

To Improve Customer Service, Stop Forcing Customers To Repeat Themselves

Security Isn't Enough. Silicon Valley Needs 'Abusability' Testing | WIRED

What to say in 7 difficult conversations with your boss

Better interior design might keep astronauts healthier and happier in deep space - The Verge

Kanetake Ebikawa On 'Full Metal Panic!', 'Gundam' And The Minimalist Elegance Of Mecha Design

The Secret History of Women in Coding

Stop saying, 'We take your privacy and security seriously'

Vox lawyers briefly censored YouTubers who mocked The Verge's bad PC build advice | Ars Technica

Harry Potter, The Hardy Boys, Narnia: Books Briefing - The Atlantic

Password mooching: Bad for Netflix, maybe worse for Hulu

The seven moral rules that supposedly unite humanity — Quartz

PureCycle's new tech could help fix our recycling system

Cookie walls don't comply with GDPR, says Dutch DPA | TechCrunch

Why Facebook's pivot to privacy could backfire - The Verge

The salary trap: What to say when a job application asks how much pay you want - The Washington Post

ji32k7au4a83 is a surprisingly bad password - The Verge

Why Self-Checkout Is and Has Always Been the Worst

Why people make unethical choices

How to correct someone without sounding like a jerk

The Uncanny Valley Nobody's Talking About: Eerie Robot Voices | WIRED

Death by a Thousand Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong | Fortune

The Art of Being Single - WSJ

Jony Ive talks AirPods design history with GQ following second-gen debut this week - 9to5Mac

I used makeup as a shield. Here's why — and how I learned to stop - The Lily

Privacy's not an abstraction

Meet history's most brilliant female coders

The 5 communication problems that destroy company morale — Quartz at Work

Health care's huge cybersecurity problem - The Verge

Hidden Messages Suggest That Facebook Sees User Privacy as a Joke

Why rejection hurts so much — and what to do about it

China's Artificial Intelligence Surveillance State Goes Global - The Atlantic

Persuading the Unpersuadable

Understanding the Customer 'Why' and Why It Matters | Inc.com

Knowledge Wants To Be Free

UX Magazine | The Community Of Over 515,000

Nielsen Norman Group: UX Training, Consulting, & Research

A List Apart – For people who make websites

UX Movement - Professional User Experience Articles

Jack Morgan | Designer at Duolingo & Google | Keynote & TED Speaker