UI / UX design is becoming increasingly essential in building web startups, and especially creating a differentiated product.

What is the best way for a college student to learn more about design? What is the best way for students learning CS to learn more about product design? How can schools like RISD become more plugged into the tech community, and how can the tech community develop more skills in graphic and web design?

What are the online resources / websites / blogs that are great places to learn more & get immersed in web design?

What i've found most useful for learning design is getting my hands dirty and jumping in. I think at the end of the day this will be the most useful resource. There is an endless amount of blogs, newsletters, articles etc… but until you've started to practice, you won't have a base to build off of.

Additional to practice I find podcasts and twitter invaluable. Shows like The Industry, Shoptalk Show and The Non-Breaking Space Show give exposure to a lot of successful people in different fields of the web community, they're also crammed full of information. From these shows i've built up a nice steady flow of resources, if something worth my consumption comes out, these people will definitely be talking about it.

I can't speak so much on the 'best way', but I can share how I learned.

I was a creative kid growing up. I used to draw everything I looked at. It eventually led me to playing around in Photoshop. I did almost every tutorial from goodtutorials.com back in the day.

When I saw the first website that I actually admired, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. At that point I immersed myself into it. I learned how to code, read books on design, read countless articles, etc.

I would say the biggest things that helped me learn were using the web products that I thought were well-designed all the time and working on my own projects.

In my opinion, there's no better to learn a subject than by doing it.

The best advice I can give to anyone who wants to learn design is to just do it and copy great design. I don't mean steal people's work (its not cool at all), but try to recreate it the work itself.

Why recreate the work? –recreating designs that you love or like will help get the juices flowing to get you into the shoes and mind of the designer behind the work. This will help you look at the details, placement, color, typography, storytelling and create a memorable and engaging experience.

Overtime you will notice patterns in design, and these design patterns are going to be the framework for you to have a direction to take before stepping 2 steps to the side to make it unique and create that award winning experience.

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RISD, SVA, Parsons (Currently attending, and graduate in a few weeks) etc. are one of a handful world class art and design schools and the skills you learn there can be applied in any field or niche in design. For example, UI design is a niche area, but it combines essentials in typography, color theory, layout, design patterns, problem solving etc. and use UI as a tool to create a great experience (UX) for experience. In general i think also getting interested in software development also helps for UI, not like turning in a software developer (unless you want to), but knowing how software works helps in UI design and also helps communicate easier with the people actually building the product.

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Lastly, in general actually learning software is to get dirty and tinker with things to see how they work along with reading/viewing tutorials online, which the resources are endless.

I recommend abduzeedo.com and PSD Tuts just to mention a few for quality tutorials. I also recommend attending Meet-ups in your city or town, which is a nice way to network and speak with people in the industry and like minded creative thinkers. I think great people to flow on twitter and also read their blog is Luke Wroblewski (Luke W as most of us refer to) and TEDTalks.

I think is in general some brief tips, resources, and idea on how to learn about design. I hope it has been helpful :)

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@Angel covered most of the online resources for the most part, but I'd add in smashing magazine and Hacker News.

The biggest part of the job is not understanding form, layout, standards and such but it's understanding the way that people behave. Not just the how, but the why as well. The difference between a UI artist and a UX designer is empathy, the other things will follow with practice.

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That being said, perfect practice makes perfect. I like the idea of recreating others work to learn the tools of the trade, but to practice mixing elements I like to take two of my favorite apps/websites/interfaces and mash them together into one design. If you look around you'll see that all of the top sites are really just mix and match pieces of each other, adapted for their different use cases.

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Also, research is key, about 1/8th of my work day is browsing competitors and other designers work to keep up with the trends and expand my mental library of reusable parts. sites for browsing good work:

I think the best way to learn, as others have said, is to just jump right in and start making and designing. It's about looking at what others are doing and reading about process, not in terms of trends or what looks cool, but in the solutions, thinking, and problems that are being solved by people.

From my personal experience, designing for the web was not part of the curriculum at the design school I went to. Instead, I got a foundation in design and communication, and then taught myself about web design on the side.

A couple good resources to check out:
alwaysreadthemanual.com
abookapart.com

@Angel @JeffreyKaine. Re-Creating to Learn: this may not be the best path for new designers. Although it forces the examination of its construction, you're negating the process of problem solving & iterating on a design to arrive at the final piece, which is arguably the most important part of the process an aspiring designer could learn. It also seems to hint at the notion design is superficial, & a visual formulae which can be mimicked, sliced, diced and slapped onto a design. It's the process of iteration & evolution which must be experienced over & over to improve design thinking. I do agree the best way to get started is get stuck in & design, either self initiate projects, or collab with friends on small projects with real goals.

I think starting out with the the right attitude and understanding of design and its roll, are crucial. Being a 'designer' isn't just knowing software or interface trends, it's being able to think in a certain way, in order to create appropriate solutions to problems… here's a couple of basic thoughts along those lines which I think are specifically relevant to those coming from a tech background looking to design...

On software… it simply doesn't matter in the beginning. Your process should be conceptually driven. Get the basics sure, but doing effects tutorials etc preemptively, isn't as productive as you may think, your time is better spent honing your skills as an actual designer. As Maslow once said, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"; as an amateur designer with a small arsenal of photoshop tutorials under your belt, you're more inclined to be lead by them if you're not working 'concept first'. Software is just a tool, so work out what you want to design first, then if you don't know how to create it, go find out. You shouldn't be hindered, or driven by your knowledge of software.

Ask the right questions… it's common for us to question the actual logistics of things, "How is this done? Once I know how to do this, I can achieve this too". But I'd urge you to start out by questioning the 'why' not the 'how'. The questions shouldn't be, "how do I make this texture" To which the answer is probably a tutorial somewhere online showing you the steps. It should be "Why do I need to use this texture? Does it add warmth to this design? maybe there are other ways I can address this issue? Maybe this is just what I've seen other designers do, why do other designers do this? is this a trend, or does it genuinely contribute to the design?" This approach opens a healthy can of worms.

@David: Thanks for responding, and that was not my intention at all just to be clear. It was more leaning towards inspiration, and no where to claim design is "superficial," or "mimicked, sliced, diced and slapped." Design is nothing like this at, and solutions can not just be simple copy/pasted from somewhere.

Design in general is all about problem solving, storying telling, creating an experience, iteration, practice, evolution, communication (delivering a message), and critical thinking etc. In terms of thinking in certain way is a must, but also opening you your mind to view things from different perspectives is huge. It brings something fresh and/or inspiring into your creative process and work in general.

@ Angel, totally agree... great summary of what good design is!

I just wanted clarify things really, as I feel for aspiring designers it can be easy to get the wrong impression of design. Although the 'sliced & diced" comment was more in the direction of Jeffs answer when he suggested — "If you look around you'll see that all of the top sites are really just mix and match pieces of each other"

@David: Great points you've have made on the actual process, and I do agree process is key and asking the right questions. Asking the correct questions are also important (as you mentioned), and questioning everything is by far the best way to look at the reasons why specific directions are taken in design generally speaking and the value of certain design choices. Great response David! –keep it up :)

@David: Thanks buddy :) –and oh okay, I see I missed that part from Jeff's response. Thanks for clarifying and now I see why you gave that response, which I do agree that design is not 'sliced & diced' and pasted into other projects as Jeff made it seem like with his comment. It is the wrong impression and misleading to new upcoming designers. Thanks again David :)

It wasn't my intention to imply that design was just "slice and dice". If you read my first comment you'll see that I say "The biggest part of the job is not understanding form, layout, standards and such but it's understanding the way that people behave. Not just the how, but the why as well." I think this is the key point here. But to practice the actual SKILLS of being a designer (tactical, not strategic) one must learn the tools, and I think the fastest way to do that would be to "slice and dice" so to speak.

My first comment was about the WHY my next comments were about the HOW.

I still stand by my statement that most of the web is just different configurations of the same simple building blocks. Feeds/streams/comments, publishers/form-fields, buttons/checkboxes/radio-buttons... the list goes on. As a designer you really do need to know how to use these elements to help the user solve a problem.

@JeffreyKaine don't mean to make this into a pedantic argument, it just read quite differently. To be fair, you did say design goes deeper in your first comment, but it was vague, & seemed to be directly contradicted by the second point.

I understand the sentiment now, still not sure there is much value to taking various bits from your favorite sites and combining them into one as practice. Not sure that's teaching someone how to use the 'building blocks' of the web in a valuable way? But i agree examining how they're used and being mindful of that context and application for when designing for yourself, would be a useful observation/exercise.

Either way, it sounds like it wasn't meant in quite the vain it first seemed.

@david Wasn't arguing, just wanted to clarify my points as it seems that I wasn't clear enough with my first stements :)

@Jeffrey Kaine no I know! All good :)

Anyone else have any thoughts on any design lessons learned specifically in relation to digital design & startups that might be helpful to newcomers?