11 of the Most Influential UX Blogs You Need to Follow

Maria and Małgorzata are two Merix girls that work as a User Experience Designers here, at Merixstudio. I’ve already asked them for pointing best places for UX inspirations while we were working on previous articles. I decided to get them all in one place and complete the list. As a result, we created the following list full of UX design resources (in no particular order) that are worth to follow. If you know of a user experience blog or podcast or anything else that we have missed and you feel it is worth a mention, please add your suggestions in the comment area :)

Awwwards

Awwwards.com collects all the best samples of websites that can be a great source of inspiration. In fact, these are the awards that recognise the talent and effort of the best web designers, developers and agencies in the world. It’s a perfect space for debate and sharing knowledge and experience. Also, I encourage you to take a look at their blog that covers such topics as web design, web development, graphic design, UX/UI and more.

Interaction Design Foundation

A nonprofit organization on a mission to make design education affordable and accessible to people across the globe. They have a unique and extensive library of free-to-access articles and textbooks and offer annual membership which provides access to over 25 Ivy League-level online UX courses. What's more, they're also home to the world's largest UX community with over 450 Local Groups across more than 90 countries.

User Defenders

Actually, User Defenders is a podcast that is aimed at highlight a great User Experience Designers and their craft by diving deeper into who they are, and what makes them successful. Its goal is to inspire and equip others to do the same. The podcast is hosted by Jason Ogle who has been designing for Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web.

UX Magazine

UX Magazine explores all facets of experience design. It covers topics such as how UX fits into technological endeavours, customer experience strategies, project planning, and organisations of every stripe. What you can find there is a discussion on latest topics and trends in design and UX strategy. The magazine also creates a community with location-based listings for conferences, talks, workshops, informal meetups, and classes.

InVision’s blog

InVision is a leading prototyping software. What is worth to highlight is that InVision has a valuable blog with thoughts of users, experience, and design from the people of the company. It’s a great and approachable place to start to understand the world of UX and web usability.

Digital Telepathy

Digital Telepathy is a design-focused blog. They want to “educate and inspire others to positively impact the world with design”. What you can find on their blog is a ton of useful inspiration and information about user experience and usability. They cover topics as inspirations, productivity, business, interviews, philosophy, etc. all of it related to design.

Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group is one of the leading voices in the user experience field. The NN Group conducts groundbreaking research, evaluates interfaces of all shapes and sizes, and guides critical design decisions to improve the bottom line. They don't just talk about the importance of testing with real users, on real tasks, in real life business situations, but also they do it. This is fully reflected on their website.

Smashing Magazine’s UX category

Smashing Magazine is a leader in the IT and design industry. This specific category of the magazine highlights quality articles on usability, interaction design, information architecture and more user experience related topics connected with web and software development. It shares valuable ideas, practical tips, and useful guidelines of UX experts. Smashing Mag also recommends best practices and impressive case studies.

Creative Bloq

Creative Bloq is one of the most popular resources for professional designers. It delivers a daily mix of advice and inspiration for web designers, graphic designers, illustrators, UX Designers and any digital and traditional artists.

Usability Geek

Justin Mifsud, who is web usability and user experience consultant, started UsabilityGeek as a means “to bridge theory and academic research with practical and personal recommendations on how to one can improve website usability.” It covers a wide array of topics that extend beyond usability, including user experience, conversion, human-computer interaction or information architecture. This one gives practical advice on everything from UX through usability to conversion rates.

Luke's Wroblewski Twitter feed

Luke Wroblewski is currently a Product Director at Google. Earlier he was the founder of Polar that was acquired by Google and Bancheck acquired by Twitter. Luke is also the author of successful books about web design: Mobile First, Web Form Design and Site-Seeing: A visual approach to web usability. I think it’s enough to encourage you to follow his Twitter feed that is full of UX ideas and inspirations.

#UX on Medium

Medium.com is a place where “words matter”. It taps into the brains of the world’s most insightful writers and thinkers to bring the best topics. In fact, it is a treasure trove of information for any work. Just use “UX” hashtag, and Medium will bring you to the countless number of highly inspirational articles and blog post. Probably you can find there most of the resources mentioned before.

For Polish readers, we can also recommend the podcast Nie Tylko Design where you can find information about Polish design, the problems it challenges, interesting projects and digital implementations. The episode usually takes one hour, and the host, Tomasz Skórski interview experienced people.

The second one Polish resource for User Experience Designers that is worth to follow is Nowy created by Paweł Nowak who is a programmer and designer. He started the blog in 2014 that is a great place to look for information about designing, IT, philosophy and events.

I know that user experience designers draw inspiration from everything and everywhere. You can find ideas in adventure books as well as speciality ones, movies, museums, travels or just by walking around. But under “everywhere and everything” may be hidden one of the blogs I listed above. I’m also aware that the list could be a way longer - there are so many people to follow: Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Mary Meeker, Chris Spooner, Marcin Wichary or Natalia Hatalska. But then this article would have to be super long ;) All the places are good resources to draw upon the knowledge and experience of UX practitioners.  

If you think that some blog, magazine or podcast should show up in this list, let me know by adding a comment section below this article.