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Side project
Tell us what your side project does.
UX Tricks creates ebooks that teach UX but
customers can also read their ebooks online if they
choose to create an account.Why did you create it?
Design is what I know and love and if the web has
taught me anything it’s that there’s always space in
the market for more learning resources, despite there
being loads of awesome resources out there already.
That being said, there are a bunch of ways that I think
UX Tricks is (or will be) better.What were you hoping to achieve?
To offer a better a way to learn UX. First of all,
learning any UX-related craft is more confusing today
than ever before. There’s so much conflicting
terminology and the fact you don’t need a
qualification in order to enter the industry doesn’t do
much to reduce the spread of misinformation. The
fact that designers can’t even agree on UX vs UI is
evidence of that. It’s a deeply confusing industry.
The industry also changes really quickly. There isn’t
only website design and app design; now there’s UX,
UI, product and so on. Often enough even relatively
seasoned designers aren’t even really sure of things
like who does what and what order to do it in.As I said, there are a lot of terrific learning
resources out there but if you’re using resources from
different sources then the knowledge you’re acquiring
is fragmented, inconsistent and incomplete. UX Tricks
isn’t doing anything new but we’re attempting to do it
better and we’re doing it all in one place.What technologies were used in building it?
UX Tricks is built upon Shopify, even though it’s more
of a content website than an ecommerce website. I
enjoy hacking Shopify to make it work in ways that
weren’t intended. The code stack is really simple:
Liquid/HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Why complicate things?How has it been received?
What users have seen, they’ve loved but I’m aware
that our biggest mistake has been building UX Tricks
privately. Publicly, users haven’t seen approximately
90 per cent of what we’ve been building but that’s
about to change soon. As a business, UX Tricks is
profitable and we’ve never had a complaint, so I guess
we’re doing something right!What do you think you’ll do next with it?
We have more content on the horizon but also more
ways to consume it. We’re working on some web-
exclusive content and also ways to turn the ebooks
into short book summaries (think Blinkist for
learning UX design).
We’re also working on some user-focused
monetisation opportunities (eg advertising that
leverages search intent instead of tracking cookies)
and a variety of small but very awesome tools for
designers that’ll complement the learning experience
for those that enjoy reading on our website.SIDE PROJECT OF THE MONTHDANIEL
SCHWARZ
Schwarz is a UX and UI
designer, web developer
and maker by background
but an educator at heart.
He now creates content
for brands like InVision,
UXPin and Adobe.
w: https://uxtricks.design
t: @mrdanielschwarzINFOUX TRICKS
Daniel Schwarz runs down his learning resource
for all things user experience