The internet is an amazing ready library of resources for anyone who wants to delve into UI/UX design. As a self-taught UI/UX designer, I’ll say with experience that it is possible to pick up new skills or even up-skill by learning through youtubers, blogs, self-paced courses, masterclasses and the like available today.
When I graduated with a BE in Computer Science Engineering, I joined a training academy where I discovered I was more interested in the front-end design process. The absence of a good design school in Goa, offering a relevant course kept me from pursuing this further. I turned to Youtube and began dabbling in free educational content. The scope of learning Youtube offers is as wide and as deep as one requires, making it a good place for newbies and experienced professionals alike, depending on what you are looking for. Here are some of my top picks for online resources to level up your UI/UX game:
1. Sarah Doody
https://www.youtube.com/@SarahDoody
Sarah Doody is a User Researcher and Experience Designer. She founded Career Strategy Lab — a UX career incubation program. Her Youtube channel and videos help UX and product designers get placed with jobs at Google, Accenture, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and more.
2. Flux Academy
https://www.youtube.com/@FluxAcademy
The Flux Academy Channel is dedicated to mentoring people and helping them discover successful careers as freelance designers. His youtube channel provides resources that cover the entire design process, right from the case study and wireframing to building up interactions and animations to the final product.
3. Maex
https://www.youtube.com/@SketchappTV
SketchAppTV predominantly delves into the use of Sketch. In addition you can also find tutorials on Principle, Zeplin, Marvel, and Adobe XD. Topics usually covered include the basics of UX design from wireframing and user flows, to advanced animations and prototyping, and recommendations for books and resources for further learning.
4. Chunbuns
https://www.youtube.com/@chunbuns
This Product Designer based in San Francisco, USA, makes videos to provide guidance and insights to new designers. She shares her experience and knowledge with the aim to make design education more accessible to young designers.
5. Caler Edwards
https://www.youtube.com/@CalerEdwards
Caler Edwards is a Full Stack Designer whose videos are inspiring for any creative. Caler’s channel features a mix of practical design tutorials and round-ups of the most beautiful digital designs from around the web.
6. Vaexperience
https://www.youtube.com/@vaexperience/videos
This channel is run by an award-winning experience designer and strategist who focuses on holistic true human-centered services and products. The channel mainly focuses on UX portfolio reviews.
7. AJ&SMART
https://www.youtube.com/@AJSmart
This channel is run by a product design and innovation studio based in Berlin, Germany and it provides a fantastic insight into working in large teams, how to use effective communication and collaboration for UI/UX designers.
8. Mizko
https://www.youtube.com/@Mizko
Mizko is a product (UX/UI) designer, lead designer, and freelancer with over 13 years of experience in the field. The experience truly shows in the wealth of knowledge showcased on this channel, in Figma skills. It is a great place to level up your design standards.
9. Femke.design
https://www.youtube.com/@femkedesign
Femke, a Senior Product Designer in British Columbia, shares her learnings and experience as a designer. She covers everything from UX Design to User Research, Prototyping, and Product on her channel.
10. Rachael How
https://www.youtube.com/@rachelhow
Rachael is a product designer from Malaysia who has made a name for herself in the UX/UI design space as an entirely self-taught designer. Her channel focuses on in-depth and inspirational content on UI/UX design and how to become a self-taught designer and building.
11. Charlie Marie
https://www.youtube.com/@charlimarieTV
This New Zealand-born designer specializes in graphic, UI and web design.She is based in Valencia, and her channel, she posts content about using design tools – mostly Sketch, Figma, and Webflow – efficiently, and design processes and vlogs related to design work.
12. Saptarshi Prakash
https://www.youtube.com/@saptarshipr
An engineer turned self-taught product designer and a Director of Design at Swiggy based in Bangalore, India, Saptarshi’s channel focuses on Adobe After Effects along with Figma, and Adobe Illustrator tutorials.
13. Laith Wallace
https://www.youtube.com/@LaithWallace
An engineer turned self-taught product designer and a Director of Design at Swiggy based in Bangalore, India, Saptarshi’s channel focuses on Adobe After Effects along with Figma, and Adobe Illustrator tutorials.
14. High Resolution
https://www.youtube.com/@HighResolution
Hosted by Bobby Ghoshal and Jared Erondu based in the USA, this channel consists of weekly interviews with product design experts – all of whom are from top companies like Google, Airbnb, etc. The content is focused on how these leading companies approach, communicate, and deploy design.
15. Sketch Together
https://www.youtube.com/@SketchTogether
Youtuber Pablo Stanley focuses on UX and UI design and illustration. His content is a good resource covering design tools such as Figma, Sketch, and also Prototyping tools such as Framer, Principle, and Flinto.
16. Dansky
https://www.youtube.com/@ForeverDansky
Dansky is a designer who shares his experiences with aspiring creatives through UI/UX tutorials. It covers all major software like Sketch, Adobe After Effects, and Principle.
17. Mike Locke
https://www.youtube.com/@MikeLocke
Mike Locke is passionate about graphic design and he specializes in UI design, UX, usability, information architecture, interaction design, Research & Analytics, and HTML/CSS.
18. Jesse Showalter
https://www.youtube.com/@JesseShowalter
Jesse’s content is apt for those looking to learn more about being a web designer, UI designer, or front-end developer.
19. Punit Chawla
https://www.youtube.com/@PunitChawla
Punit is a professional UX/UI Designer based in India. His channel is dedicated to Web design, UI design, Adobe Xd Tutorials, and Figma Tutorials.
20. DesignCourse
https://www.youtube.com/@DesignCourse
This is a channel run by Gary Simon and provides tutorials on UI/UX, Frontend Dev, Backend Dev, Graphic Design, and much more!
Some obvious advantages of self-learning online are:
- it is free, mostly
- you get to learn directly from experts
- you can connect with these experts
- by exposing yourself to a wider range of experts you can train yourself across the range of a particular skill
- you get a perspective of the field as a whole and how it operates
- you can dabble in any field and see for yourself if it is really your cup of tea before committing to pursue it further.
However, like with everything on the internet, it can be intimidating and time-consuming to find exactly what you are looking for. Patience and self motivation to go through enough content, before you zero down on what is relevant, reliable and useful for you, is key. This list might be a good place to start.