July 29, 2025
We have put together some resources on User Experience Design that you might find useful – Many thanks to Nicola Dobiecka for these resources!
User Experience Design is a fascinating area that can make a difference to people’s lives.
Your training as a psychologist makes you very important for this area, as it needs the critical thinking, psychological knowledge and ethical consideration that psychology training offers.
Overview – what is User Experience Design?
-Nielsen Norman Group article describing what UX design is and isn’t:
What Is User Experience (and What Is It Not)? – NN/g
-UX Methods provides a basic description of the disciplines in the field of UX and the methods employed:
UX Methods V2 | About UX Methods
-Overview from the National Careers Service:
nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/ux-designer
Websites for practical applications
• Laws of UX: a collection of best practices that designers can consider when building user interfaces
• UX Myths: collects the most frequent user experience misconceptions and explains why they don’t hold true uxmyths.com/
• Userfocus: articles and training: www.userfocus.co.uk/
• Nielsen Norman Group: collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about some principles of human psychology and how they relate to UX design
Psychology for UX: Study Guide – NN/g
• A List Apart ”explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.” alistapart.com
• Boxes and Arrows ”Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design—including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture, and the design of business”
• Free UX Meetup groups for practitioners of all levels and students
Northern User Experience – nuxuk.org
Courses
-Interaction Design Foundation: www.interaction-design.org/courses
And
-Nielsen Norman Group: www.nngroup.com/courses/
Both offer paid-for courses following different pathways, for example:
-UX Designer, User Researcher, Usability Expert, Interaction Designer
-And a wide range of free articles
-UX mastery website has an article collating a wide range of free and paid-for courses
uxmastery.com/resources/ux-courses/
Books
Seminal texts
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change by Viktor Papanek
• The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
• About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper
• Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories by Donna Spencer
Practical applications
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by Steve Krug
• Interviewing users, by Steve Portigal
• A Practical Guide to Information Architecture, by Donna Spencer made to free download by the author
• Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
• 100 Things Every Designer Needs to know about People by Susan Weinschenk
• Erika Hall on user research
-Just Enough Research – www.mulebooks.com/just-enough-research
-Conversational Design – www.mulebooks.com/conversational-design
Collated book list
uxmastery.com/resources/books/
We hope you find these resources useful!
Dr Aspa Paltoglou and the Employability Team, with many thanks to Nicola Dobiecka
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