The Designer / Developer Toolbox for 2018
Published on Jan 3, 2018
A friend of mine just started as a “UX Team of One” (and Front-End Dev too!) at a startup. She asked me nicely to put together a list of tools that I use(d) in a similar position at my company.
Since it’s the end of the year, and the beginning of a new one, I figured I’d go through all of the apps, websites, tools and services that I used/visited/depended on throughout 2017 and list them out for reference throughout the new year…
Tools and Apps:
- Sketch.app (+ http://sketch.land )
- InVision (and the new InVision Studio!!!)
- Principle.app
- Figma.app
- Keynote.app
- Spirit
- Giphy Capture (for recording quick gifs of “shit to fix”)
- Gifrocket (convert everything to GIFs!!!)
- Camtasia — record and edit screencasts like a pro!
- Wistia’s new Soapbox product works will for this too
- Skitch (for pointing out exactly what to fix)
- Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, AfterEffects (and I guess the new XD product?)
- IntelliJ product line (or use Atom)
- Postman (for playing with APIs)
- VirtualBox, Vagrant and/or Docker (stop building your apps from scratch every time)
- Alfred (make hotkeys for everything!)
- Nozio and Spotify (to block out the noize)
Websites and Newsletters:
- http://www.sansfrancis.co
- http://shortcuts.design/
- https://www.productmanual.co/
- https://css-tricks.com/ + https://css-tricks.com/design-resource-sites/
- https://www.smashingmagazine.com/
- https://www.nngroup.com/
- https://www.sitepoint.com/ — They have an awesome newsletter too! https://www.sitepoint.com/versioning/
- https://www.casestudy.club/
- https://www.invisionapp.com/blog
- 99u.com
- https://design.google/library/
- https://airbnb.design
- http://facebook.design/
- https://www.reallygoodux.io/
- http://www.designyourway.net/inspiration/navigation-inspiration-for-mobile-user-interfaces-57-designs/
- https://swipefile.io
- http://uigarage.net/
- https://www.thebestdesigns.com/
- https://www.siteinspire.com/
- http://www.webcreme.com/
- https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/
Templates:
- https://energy.gov/eere/communicationstandards/user-experience-research-templates-and-examples
- https://standards.usa.gov/components/
- http://www.mentorcg.com/resources/
- https://gridprint.in
- http://sketchsheets.com/
Books and Articles:
- https://resilientwebdesign.com/introduction/
- https://medium.com/design-voices/the-pen-is-mightier-than-the-laptop-2d057d3d5b7d (please don’t ever use myBalsamiq)
- https://blog.prototypr.io/a-framework-for-creating-a-predictable-and-harmonious-spacing-system-8eee8aaf773c?gi=31eb83426ec
- https://blog.marvelapp.com/can-master-design-must-first-master-fundamentals/
- http://whatusersdo.com/how-psychology-principles-are-used-in-ux-design/
- https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/02/how-do-users-really-hold-mobile-devices.php
- http://gretelny.com/work/netflix/
Best of luck at your new gig, Lexie! And happy 2018 to all of you :)
