UI design book
Master UI design in days, not years.
Design intuitive, accessible and beautiful interfaces using quick and practical UI design guidelines.

Master UI design in days, not years.
Design intuitive, accessible and beautiful interfaces using quick and practical UI design guidelines.
No tedious, high-level design theory, just a small handful of powerful guidelines to solve most interface design problems.
Much of what comprises a good UI design is the systematic application of simple UI design guidelines.
Learn the how and why behind interface design to ensure that every design detail has a logical purpose.
With an increasingly overwhelming amount of design tips, videos, books, and blog posts out there, you can burn through a lot of time and money only to end up even more confused. Over nearly 2 decades working as a product designer for startups, agencies, corporations and government, Iāve found that you only need a small handful of UI design guidelines to solve most interface design problems.
You donāt even need to be exceptionally creative or artistic to be a solid UI designer (although it doesn't hurt). Much of what comprises an intuitive, accessible and beautiful interface design, is the simple, systematic application of these key UI design guidelines.
I wrote this book to help you cut through the unnecessary noise, and focus on the 20% of UI design knowledge that will bring you 80% of the results. UI design is so much more than just making things look pretty, every detail has the power to make or break the user experience of your product.
Rather than comprehensively detailing countless chapters of tedious high-level design theory, this book contains 8 concise chapters of quick and practical UI design guidelines and tips that you can immediately put into action. Examples and a clear rationale are provided for each principle, to help you better understand and articulate the reasons behind your design decisions.
Below are a few examples of UI design guidelines you'll find in the book, I've posted other quick tips on Twitter too.
Example 1
Break up large pieces of information into multiple smaller ones to make it easier and faster for people to understand. This is increasingly important as our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.
Highlight key information using descriptive headings, this allows people to scan the information at a high level first and delve deeper by reading the supporting copy if needed. Since some wonāt read supporting copy, make sure the headings are descriptive and convey the key points.
Example 2
To aid readability, ensure copy is 45 - 75 characters per line (including spaces). If lines are too long, it makes it harder for people to gauge where the line starts and ends. If lines are too short, our eyes get stressed by having to travel back too often. Having a comfortable line length is especially important for long-form body copy.
This book won't teach you how to create glassmorphic visual effects for your next Dribbble shot (although they do look pretty cool). Instead of trends, it focuses on simple, timeless design guidelines used to design user friendly products in the real world.
By the end of the book, youāll have a set of rules that govern your UI design decisions, so youāre not just relying on āgut feelingā or what looks pretty. Youāll be able to confidently articulate logical reasons to support each interface design detail. Most importantly, youāll be able to apply the guidelines youāve learnt, to efficiently design intuitive, accessible, and beautiful interfaces.
The design below is a fictional property details page for a short-term property rental app, similar to Airbnb. Many designers would look at this design without seeing any issues. Some might make subjective comments on aesthetics. Only a few would notice that there are numerous objective UI design issues that could negatively affect usability and accessibility. Even fewer would be able to explain why.
It might not sound fun or creative, but many of my design decisions are based on risk. The risk that someone could have difficulty using an interface e.g. light grey text can look nice, but thereās a risk that some may find it more difficult to read. Using the UI design guidelines in this book, weāll find and fix the interface elements that pose a potential risk to usability.
As you can see, there are quite a few issues that need to be fixed. Rather than jumping straight into timely and costly usability testing, thereās a lot we can do to avoid usability risks beforehand. Simply applying the design guidelines in this book, results in the design below.
Not only does this design look better, some quick usability testing will show that it performs better too. Usability testing is great, but it wonāt highlight all of our design issues. So, itās important that we avoid as many known usability risks as possible. Iāve detailed the rationale behind the updated design below.
With just a handful of key UI design guidelines, weāve taken a problematic interface and turned it into one that looks and works well. We also know why, and can articulate the logical reasons behind our design decisions.
This book is best suited to those in the product development space with an interest in improving their UI design skills. You know some of the basics, and may have dabbled in design, but still struggle to design an informed and professional interface.
Iām a product designer specialising in UI design and design systems. For nearly 2 decades, Iāve worked across startups, agencies, corporations and government. I live and breathe design and enjoy sharing my knowledge with others.