8 Free Toolkits, Card Decks, and Practical Guides to Help the Curious UX Designer Broaden Their Skillset
The best UX designers I’ve met throughout my career are the ones who never stop learning. They never stop being curious, widening their perspective, and refining their craft.
There are a plethora of UX design resources out there to help you become one of the “best”, but sifting through them all to find timely info and inspiration can be overwhelming.
Here are the top 8 resources for the curious UX designer, in no particular order:
1. UX Tools
With easy-to-follow UX challenges, tutorials, design tools research, and a job board, UX Tools is a knowledge and resource hub for foundational UX. It provides all the practical skills and tools a new designer needs to build portfolio-worthy deliverables.
2. Laws of UX
A fascinating exploration of the psychology behind best practices to consider when building user interfaces. The beautifully designed site offers easy-to-read digestible content around each law including an overview, takeaways, and my personal favorite — its origins.
3. Liberatory Design
A creative problem-solving approach that explores the intersection of equity and design. Liberatory Design builds on the legacy of best practices in design thinking while being centered around promoting empathy and equity via co-creation methods. They provide an incredible free downloadable card deck with activities to help you implement Liberatory Design into your design practice.
4. Design Kit by IDEO
A step-by-step tactical guide to Human-Centered Design methods. The exercises outlined are designed to help UX designers inspire, ideate, and implement solutions to difficult problems in a repeatable way.
5. Tools for Taking Action by the Stanford d.school
A collection of free resources from their classes and workshops that help designers approach challenges from new and unique perspectives.
Tip: Scroll all the way to the bottom and use the filtered search to find toolkits and downloadable PDF templates on new topics to experiment with.
6. Brainstorm Cards by Board of Innovation
This set of 52 cards was created to help you brainstorm and spark new solution ideas to a challenging problem. UX design teams or individuals can use them as a catalyst for smarter and more unique ideation sessions. They are free to download if you enter your email.
7. Notion User Testing Templates by Slava Shestopalov
These 3 free and no-nonsense notion templates will help UX researchers run effective moderated qualitative usability tests on a prototype or live product. Slava’s article contains links to each template (Testing Script, Resting Report, and Feedback) + clear explanations for when and how to use each.
8. Nielsen Norman Group Articles
Known within the industry as the Bible of UX. While NNg is not technically a toolkit or guide, my list of resources wouldn’t be complete without including them. You can find the source of UX truth in their article center + many new theories to test out.
Did anything pique your curiosity?
I’ve been curating, evolving, and refining this list for over 15 years — I hope you find something useful. If you have, please share it with a friend, your co-worker, or better yet, your team. The more good UX designers in the world, the better!
Are there any free resources you think I should add? If so, please drop them in the comments below.
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