Finally, an awesome UX tutorial

// Answering the question "What are the best resources for learning bleeding-edge web, UI and UX design?" on Quora, Colm Tuite, UI/Visual Designer & Developer, decided to write one of this own. The result was an extensive post / #tutorial  with 10 steps to a decent (if not great) start in learning about #UX. To sum up: 

1. Discover the problem
2. Get to know your users
3. Learn to #wireframe properly
4. Communicate effectively
5. Guide your users
6. Encourage your users
7. Reward your users
8. Learn the basic fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Python etc.)
9. Learn visual #design
10. Study. Study. Study.

Read the full article here http://b.qr.ae/XNmOQH

A CRAP way to improve usability

Here is an excellent introduction to core values of good design. Read it and check which apply to your site :)

Good visual design offers more than improving people’s attitudes to a design. Good visual design will actually make interfaces easier to use.
There are at least four key principles of visual design that have an important impact on usability. These four principles — contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity — were originally given the engaging acronym CRAP by Robin Williams (the visual designer, not the comedian). You can exploit these four principles to make user interfaces both more attractive and easier to use.

Full article: A CRAP way to improve usability | Userfocus.

Designing UX Exchange

An excellent case study of designing for the Web. Most often web designs start with a let's-make-something-pretty concept instead of first realizing what is the content, the desired features and which are the user actions we want to "provoke", and the developing a design to accommodate these elements.

UX Exchange is a Q&A site in the Stack Exchange SE family of websites, the most famous of which you probably know: Stack Overflow. Every SE site has its own look and feel, and as the UX site is getting close to graduating from beta, a new design was in order.

Full article: Designing UX Exchange.