Design interfaces people can read, navigate, and trust
UI/UX Design is about the part of software that people actually meet: the screens, the controls, the order things appear in, and the way the system answers back. It covers usability goals, design principles and process, wireframing, visual hierarchy, interaction styles, navigation, help and search, and data visualisation, together with the evaluation methods — expert review, usability testing, and field study — that decide whether any of it worked. Our articles compress that ground into pieces that stand on their own: each one takes a single question, works it through with examples, and ends where the next one can begin, so a single article is a complete twenty-five minutes of work. Work through them and you can plan a design, sketch it, test it, and defend the decisions you made with evidence rather than taste.
Coming soon
What usability means in practice, and why one design has to work for users who are nothing like each other.
What usability means in practice, and why one design has to work for users who are nothing like each other.
Turn guidelines and theory into a repeatable process, from first sketch to signed-off decision.
Turn guidelines and theory into a repeatable process, from first sketch to signed-off decision.
Ways to find out whether a design works, and what three long projects show about getting it wrong.
Ways to find out whether a design works, and what three long projects show about getting it wrong.
The two interaction styles most interfaces rely on: acting on objects directly, and moving through a structure.
The two interaction styles most interfaces rely on: acting on objects directly, and moving through a structure.
Interaction that is not a mouse on a desk: speech, command languages, hardware, and shared use.
Interaction that is not a mouse on a desk: speech, command languages, hardware, and shared use.
The visible layer: how a screen is organised, what it looks like, and how fast it has to answer.
The visible layer: how a screen is organised, what it looks like, and how fast it has to answer.
What users need when the screen is not enough: written help, tutorials, and ways to find things.
What users need when the screen is not enough: written help, tutorials, and ways to find things.
Charting as an interface problem: picking the form, showing the data honestly, and letting readers explore it.
Charting as an interface problem: picking the form, showing the data honestly, and letting readers explore it.
“A full interface design course, cut into articles you can finish in one sitting.”
Most interface titles either show screenshots or defend theory. This collection does both in short pieces: usability goals, principles, wireframing, navigation, help, search, visualisation, and the evaluation methods that test them. Nothing is padded out for a semester, and every article stands on its own.
Nano College takes the standard university textbook for a course and turns it into short, self-contained pieces you can actually finish. We keep the ground the textbook covers and the rigour it insists on; what we leave out is the padding that only exists to fill a semester.