Book Summary
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Whenever you stumble across a design you really like, ask yourself: "Did the designer do anything here that I never would have thought to do?"
Refactoring UI
Make your ideas look awesome, without relying on a designer. Learn how to design beautiful user interfaces by yourself using specific tactics explained from a developer's point-of-view.
This is a book written by a developer-designer duo, Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger. It’s written primarily for developers. Here's an example to explain what I mean. That being said, I think it should be required reading for every designer and everyone working on digital products. It's by far one of the most practical and valuable resources for any UI designer I've come across. Ever looked at your work-in-progress and thought, “I know this looks terrible, but I have no idea why”? The obvious answer you're missing is probably in this book.
Most UX/UI design books that claim to focus on "best practices" miss the mark by focusing purely on high-level principles, design process, colour theory, and user research. It's very rare that a book dives deep on the UI side of things and how to actually design digital products, with practical tips and real actual examples. Not just theory; no fluff; 100% signal; 0% noise. Because it's primarily written from a developer's point-of-view, it explains concepts clearly and suggests common sense tactics to make your design more user friendly.
Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger are very active on Twitter and within the design/dev community and Refactoring UI is a digital product success story in itself.
Whenever you stumble across a design you really like, ask yourself: "Did the designer do anything here that I never would have thought to do?"
