Design for Developers

Solve common application design and usability issues with flair! These essential design and UX techniques will help you create good user experiences, iterate smoothly on frontend features, and collaborate effectively with designer colleagues.

In Design for Developers you will learn how to:

• Use color, typography, and layout to create hierarchy on a web page
• Apply color palettes consistently in a user interface
• Choose the correct typefaces and fonts
• Conduct user research to validate design decisions
• Quickly plan a website’s layout and structure

In Design for Developers, author Stephanie Stimac shares the unique insights she’s learned as a designer on the Microsoft Developer Experiences team. This one-of-a-kind book provides a developer-centric approach to the essential design fundamentals of modern web applications. You’ll learn how to craft a polished visual design with just color, space, and typeface, and put all your new skills into practice to design a website from scratch.

Foreword by Aaron Gustafson.

About the technology

Developer-made design decisions can have a real impact on a site’s user experience. Learn to speak design’s language, and you’ll be able to confidently contribute to a design process, collaborate with designer colleagues, and make more informed decisions about how you build your apps.

About the book

Design for Developers reveals essential design and UX principles every web developer needs to know. You’ll love the book’s developer-centric approach, which demonstrates new ideas with examples from popular sites and user interfaces. Discover insightful techniques for user research, and learn to use color, typography, and layout to create communicative web visuals. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll know it’s true: having good design sense will make you a better web developer!

What's inside

• Conduct user research to validate design decisions
• Quickly plan a website’s layout and structure
• Iterate smoothly on frontend features
• Use color, typography, and layout to create hierarchy on a web page

About the reader

For web developers familiar with HTML, CSS, and the JavaScript basics.

About the author

Stephanie Stimac is a design technologist and senior product manager who focuses on building and improving developer experiences. She has previously worked on the Microsoft Edge browser.

Table of Contents

PART 1 DESIGN BASICS
1 Bridging the gap between design and development
2 Design fundamentals
PART 2 USER EXPERIENCE
3 User experience basics
4 User research
5 User experience design
PART 3 VISUAL DESIGN ELEMENTS
6 Web layout and composition
7 Enhancing web layout with animation
8 Choosing and working with typography on the web
9 Color theory
10 Building a website
PART 4 AFTER VISUAL DESIGN
11 Test, validate, iterate
12 Developer choices and user experience

Stephanie Stimac is a design technologist and senior product manager who focuses on building and improving developer experiences. She previously worked on the Microsoft Edge browser for 6 years before joining RapidAPI. She studied web design and has worked as both a designer and front-end developer with clients that include Microsoft, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Safeway and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Apart from her work focusing on identifying developer needs in the browser web platform, Stephanie frequently speaks on the topics of user interface and visual design at conferences around the world.