Learning session 35: Reading and Practicing
Topic
Refactoring UI is a great book for web designers and developers who want to improve their user interface design skills.
When you learn something new, it is important to practice what you have learned in order to reinforce the new information and make it a part of your long-term memory.
My process
This learning session was very productive where I read the book and I immediately practiced and also learned some new tricks to some mistakes I made in past designing.
Here are some topics that I mainly focused on and practiced:
- Choosing a personality
- Border radius
- Designing by process of elimination
- Labels are the last resort
- Semantics are secondary
- Starting with too much white space
- Sizing the font and creating a font system
I began reading the “Refactoring UI” book while enrolled in the Uxcel course. The book is mostly suggested for people who are new to design careers yet desire to create amazing, user-centered products.
In order to make the button appear neutral, severe, or even friendly, I first practiced applying the radius to it.
There are ways to design that don’t require you to spend hours deciding on an icon’s or font’s size. One of these ways is to use the process of elimination.
Then, I created the primary, secondary, and tertiary buttons.
What challenged me
There were several challenges I encountered when practicing like applying border-radius to the buttons and finding the right balance between the width and height of the border. I also struggled with making sure that the border was evenly distributed around the button.
While designing and using the process of elimination method I had some difficulties with keeping track of all of the potential designs and solutions I was considering. Second, it was easy to get bogged down in the details of each potential solution and lose sight of the bigger picture.
Finally, it was challenging to let go of certain solutions that I was attached to, even if they were not the best option. Overall, the Designing by process of elimination method was a challenging but rewarding experience.
The book “Refactoring UI” is full of tips and techniques that can be used to improve your design skills. It also showed me how to better organize my design process and how to create a more efficient workflow.
Thank you for making it this far.
