User Interface (UI) design is crucial to enable your website to stand out in the competition. It will help if you try to understand UI design concepts, as that will be a catalyst in taking your website to the next level.
It is a fact that website designs based on UI principles help attract visitors and attain your website goals.
It will also help if you clear your concepts about UX in parallel to that of UI before you dig deeper into the role of web designs in enabling you to achieve your website goals.
While UI refers to User Interface, UX refers to user experience. And both of them are important in web design.
In simple terms, you can regard visuals, such as fonts and colors, as part of UI; and the feel of the overall experience on the website as part of UX.
Despite UI and UX being different, they work in coordination with each other. Given the inter-dependency of UI and UX, it will not be wrong to say that one cannot go without the other.
For example, say your website looks good but is hard to use. It will not be successful. Likewise, if it is easy to use but does not look good, it will not be successful either.
Here, we share 75 essential resources for web designers to accomplish the best UI/UX designs. Read on:
UI Kits and Kit Marketplaces
- iOS 11 iPhone on Facebook bearing Origami, Sketch, Framer, and Photoshop templates of GUI elements
- UpLabs for a wide variety of UI kits to download to use for various devices
- Creative Tim for some of the best Bootstrap UI kits
- 55+ Elements Free UI Kit
- Oh no, not another UI Kit
- PSD Booster’s UI Kit for themes and other freebies
- UI8 for more than 4,900+ curated design resources
- Creative Market for more than 2,200 UI kits and libraries with graphic assets and tools
UI & UX Websites and Resources
- Dribbble, an online community of UI UX designers to exhibit their past work and get hired
- UX Magazine, a platform for everything related to user experience
- UX Matters, a web magazine about different aspects of user experience
- UX Planet, a dependable resource for relevant topics related to user experience
- Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) is among the leaders in research-based user experience.
- Usability.gov, for user-experience best practices and strategies. It helps understand how to create more usable, useful, and accessible websites
- Usability Geek is a blog that provides practical tips on usability and user experience
UI Inspiration
- Design Snips, a notable online resource for inspirations to incorporate into UI design
- Site Inspire for the best web and interactive designs
- Niice, a mood board generator that pulls in design and UX projects from various sites to inspire web designers
- Behance, a popular and inspirational website for UI professionals
- Awwwards, excellent UI design websites for your inspiration
- Muzli, a great source of inspiration for UI professionals
- Panda, a single platform for news and inspiration
Design Patterns
- Welie for many best practices in interaction design
- Astrum, a lightweight pattern library for web projects
- UI Scraps, a collection of user interface designs
- User Interface Engineering, a diversified resource for UI professionals
- Elements of Design, an excellent collection of UI components for best website design practices
Checklists and Guidelines
Fonts and Icons
- Font Awesome, an icon set, and toolkit with icons and social logos
- Icon8 for free, pixel perfect icons for different design styles in png and vector
- Flat Icon, a large database of free vector icons, and it has more than 145,000+ icons in various formats
- UI Faces, to get free avatar placeholder sources for web design apart from options for Sketch, Adobe XD and Figma
- UX Font Pack for Adobe fonts
- The Noun Project for a wide collection of UX design icons
- Icon Finder for free and premium UX icons
Tools for Vector and Bitmap Images
- Sketch, a design toolkit to help create the best work
- Adobe XD, a UI/UX design solution
- Figma enables multiple designers, simultaneously working on the same file, to create responsive designs
- Flinto for design micro-interactions and screen transitions
- Zeplin enables to publish finalized designs from Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD and Photoshop
Mind Mapping
- Xmind, a mind mapping software
- Bubbl to create colorful mind maps to print or share with others
- Coggle to develop mind maps quickly
- MindMapple, pre-loaded with themes and templates, assist in creating mind maps
- MindMeister to share ideas with a team using a mind map
- LucidChart is more or less like Coggle that helps to develop mind maps
Wireframing and Prototyping
- UX Pin, a UI design and prototyping tool that has a real feel. It uses code components, logic, states and design systems
- OmniGraffle to create visuals with a wide array of features, including design tools, a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface, and a notes function
- Balsamiq, a fast and impactful wireframing software
- InVision, a digital product design platform to make excellent UX
- Marvel to wireframe, prototype, user test, design, and inspect designs
- Wireframe CC, a fine-tuned design tool for wireframing
Testing
- User Testing, an online usability testing and research tool to improve customer experience
- Eyequant, based on artificial intelligence and neuroscience to assist in designing seamless, conversion-boosting UX
- Hotjar to track how visitors use a website and collect user feedback. It helps to convert more visitors into customers.
- Inspectlet to find where visitor’s attention goes on the website and where they get stuck
- FiveSecondTest is a practical usability test to optimize the clarity of your designs and visitors’ first impressions. It helps improve conversion rates
- GTmetrix is a free tool to analyze page’s speed performance and to get recommendations for improvement
Web Accessibility
Surveys
Conclusion
With the resources discussed in this article, you can select the most appropriate design resource for your needs.
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