Reddit reviews Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences (Voices That Matter)

My advice is to follow 3 tracks.

• Build relationships. Find local meetings where people building products/companies or other designers go. Such as: 1 Million Cups, Open coffee club, Creative Mornings, CoFounders Lab, StartUp Grind, local UX meetups. Pick 1 weekly and go every week. Pick 1-2 others, go when you can. Talk to the people who run the group. See if they need any help checking people. Volunteer to do that. If you get to, be friendly and chat with people on the way in. This is your tribe. Don't feel like you don't belong b/c you are young or are checking them in (or whatever other excuse your mind might come up with). This is your opportunity to find out about what people are working on. Some people will be working on something that interests you, that you have the skills to help with (eventually if not now), and have a personality you could enjoy working with. Give 100% of these people your card. Tell them you do UI/UX on contract. Ask for their card. Talk to them more at the end of the meeting if you can. Not in a sales way. But in a get to know more about them way. Then follow up with an email shortly afterward, a few days to a week. And in 6 months again if you haven't connected since. Do this every week for 2-3 years and you will have your client base and reputation in town. If you need practice to feel confident doing the networking part, then practice. Your career counseling dept at college could probably help you practice. Friends can be good practice too. Comfort with networking is critical to running your own business. Your goal should be to eventually lead a recurring meeting.
  
  
• Build your skills. First college is great for learning some things. I believe it is terrible for learning UI/UX. Studying behavioral economics would probably be the most applicable, some psychology or data science as well. UI/UX moves too fast. But here are my recommendations for becoming good at UI/UX quickly:
  
  

1. Start using Sketch app by Bohemian coding. It is the current industry standard.
   
   
2. Sign up for Subform app wait list. It will probably be the next industry standard. But is not available yet.
   
   
3. Study design systems Practice using these elements to create screens. Download the Sketch file. Then grab the elements you need and create screens to build an app (preferably to solve a simple problem you care about). Start small. Practice designing quickly. Then go back and make details precise. Eventually you should be able to build your own design system like this.
   
   
4. Study material design and iOS design.
   
   
5. For inspiration in practice, look at examples on Dribbble, Behance, and at the apps you use everyday.
   
   
6. Get feedback from friends and family on the things you have designed.
   
   
7. Read books like Inspired, Seductive Interaction Design, Sprint, Product Leadership. There are many more.
   
   
8. Understand you need to know more than design to do contract work for small businesses. Your clients may often ask for one thing but really need something different. Study business in general. Read books and magazines about business models, industry shifts, etc. Good UX designers are always balancing user needs and business model needs. There is no formula for this. It takes practice. Lots of practice. Youth and inexperience here will be a challenge. Talk to as many people in their 30s/40+s about business lessons they have learned as you can. This knowledge will help your design.
   
   
9. Don't wait for the perfect idea to practice. Practice everyday.
   
   

• Build your savings. So you can go full-time at a co-working space. This is less direct advice. But you will need to have a few months of living expenses saved so one day you can dive in. A co-working space costs a few hundred per month but this is where your client base likely lives or goes to meetings occasionally. Being part of one shows you have a professional presence. And the serendipity at these places can be off the charts. And I highly recommend not working form home only for many reasons, sanity being an important one. Also, contract work can be feast or famine. I have had a handful of weeks in the past 4 years where I have needed to complete 60 billable hours work. This is more stressful than the weeks where I only have 20 billable hours b/c I save knowing work will be up and down.
  
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  These are things that led me to where I am today. Others may have completely different or contradictory advice. But these are my go to methods. And most of my clients in the past 2 years have come to me. I didn't call them, or post an ad. Generally they found me through a recommendation from a friend, LinkedIn, Twitter, slack group, Dribbble, or at a meeting.

Try Seductive Interaction Design. It's less of a step-by-step instructional and more of a interaction theory guide.

There are limits and boundaries, we(humans) are those limits and boundaries, our eye and our brain. Do you recon an interface IronMan Computer-like would work in real life? I don't think so ... At least not for someone below 280 IQ.

Let me put it in a different way. Is the computer in you DNA? No it's not. Is the computer in your past history(as human)? No it's not. Homo sapiens are 50.000 years old, computers/digital interfaces are 20-30 years old? First writing on a plane surface was 5210 years ago. First writing on a computer was ... let's say 100 years old.

Now ... what would be the easiest things for you brain to understand? What's in your DNA and what's not? If you think this is irrelevant you should study design (not design tools or other digital/print designs). You can start with this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seductive-Interaction-Design-Effective-Experiences/dp/0321725522

It's cool and I agree with pushing the boundaries but not in a stupid way or an unlimited way (see Iron Man digital interfaces).

As humans, we are limited.

Seductive Interaction Design by Stephen P. Richardson is pretty good..

https://www.amazon.com/Seductive-Interaction-Design-Effective-Experiences/dp/0321725522/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486488964&sr=8-1&keywords=seductive+interaction+design

Pixel Perfect Precision handbook for UI basics.

Seductive Interaction Design is also a good read.

Visit Dribbble, Behance, Codepen etc. for inspiration.

Seductive Interaction Design, Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design

Well, it's my job, so definitely I can recommend some resources for you to learn from.


Customer Manipulation - Chloe Thomas

Seductive Interaction Design Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences - Stephen Anderson

Gamify How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things - Brian Burke(2014)

Tested Advertising Methods

The Irresistible Offer How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less - Mark Joyner 2005

Brainfluence 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing - Roger Dooley

No need to thank me Jeff Bezos, you rich smart man.

Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences