Cecilie 🧙♀️I think I asked this a few months ago, but, again:
How do I learn web design? How do I learn to make websites work good and look good and feel good?
Party Cat 🆒@cvennevik Read everything you can on the topic. Meet people, ask questions. Most importantly: Do research. Observe usage, build up your empathy for the people experiencing sites and how different they are from you.
@ColinsBadIdeas Right, but how do I find my way past repetitive SEO junk to the actual useful things to read? What does "meet people" mean? What questions, beyond the ones I've already asked? And how do you research as, just, a person learning this in their own time?
And isn't this the kind of advice you give someone who wants to further develop skills they already have, and not to someone who still doesn't know, or even know *of*, the basics and fundamentals?
@cvennevik You’d be surprised how entry-level some of the suggestions are, like doing research. But your response is fair - I wasn’t very detailed.
Regarding what to read, you can start with some books: Design of Everyday Things (though Norman is a little problematic these days), Steve Krug’s books, and The Inmates are Running the Asylum and About Face by Alan Cooper all give a high-level view of roles and goals. From there, you may have a stronger lexicon for searching.
@cvennevik That said, books are getting a little dated and online is getting a little, well, garbage. You might want to start looking for communities instead of sites or articles, though there’s risk there too.
One idea might be to look up job postings and use that as a jumping off point to do some research on terminology and responsibilities, which can help focus your searches if you set out to try and understand the ask from each post and learn more about what you don’t know.
@cvennevik But the best thing would be to find a mentor who does the work and can help you directly. There’s a lot that can differ between, for example, a student choosing their major versus someone who’s been working in accounting for 15 years and wants to change their career. Finding someone who can tailor their advice to a detailed understanding of your circumstances would be the gold standard for guidance. But I’m happy to do what I can toot by toot.
@ColinsBadIdeas Thank you for the more thorough answers! 💚 It does give me more of an idea of what to do.
@cvennevik Happy to help! Ping me if you have any more questions!