←back to thread

Ask HN: How to learn UI/UX as a data/BE engineer?

39 points thenaturalist | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 15:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.223s | source

Hi HN,

coming from a data/ BE background I feel extremely familiar with reasoning about systems and performance from the cloud-infra to the pipeline stack level. Or I'm super familiar with data visualization.

I feel like falling off a cliff when trying to extrapolate that knowledge to the more customer-facing world.

Despite having some tool ideas in the past, I realized I shy away from going towards the front end because I really lack any conecptual frame of how to think about and subsequently implement UI or UX.

I don't mean that in a nitty-gritty-designer focussed way but more like first-principle understanding:

What makes a good color scheme?

What makes a great wording and why?

What's a good form of presenting information?

I feel like I can recognize good UI/UX when I see it (as is often the case with HN company LPs), but I'd totally fail at distilling check boxes that such good examples tick.

Any pointers to how I can learn about these worlds and develop an understanding of what principles UI/UX should follow?

1. andrei_says_ ◴[21 Oct 24 18:04 UTC] No.41906681[source]▶
Despite being bundled together, UX and UI are quite different. The problem space is also quite large.

UI-wise I second the recommendation of starting with an existing component library. Bootstrap is still a good start.

UX-wise - which would be the process of determining the process, I recommend taking a look at the “breadboarding” approach as described here.

https://basecamp.com/shapeup/1.3-chapter-04

For this, all you need is pen and paper. The process is low fidelity, cheap, and lets you quickly flesh out your ideas toward concrete screens at which point you can reach out for the component library.