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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: 0.204s | 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. Neff ◴[21 Oct 24 18:23 UTC] No.41906872[source]▶
As others have mentioned, there are differences between UX and UI.

On the UX side, the main goals are to

1. Understand the needs of the user

2. Understand psychological principles of perception and cognition.

3. Present the information in a way to enable the user to accomplish their task with the least cognitive load possible (typically.. there are edge cases where you want to introduce more friction but we will ignore those for now)

Start by getting a good understanding of the core Gestalt principles - https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ui-design/what-are-gestalt... - which influence how people perceive things. These principles are a core building block for UX and need to become an instinctive tool you use for arranging information and interfaces to achieve specific goals.

From there I'd suggest reading the following

- Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug

- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

- Everything by Edward Tufte, which as a data person you might have already read

Getting a foundation of understanding how people process their world will be crucial to growing a UX competency. The color and wording part will come after that foundation is built.