UI and UX design tutorials: free learning resources

UX design might be a young industry, but it’s growing at full speed. Today, people are flocking to the world of UX and seeking to learn as much as they can about it. The most common ways of learning UX include classics like taking a class, learning from experienced designers or learning by yourself with any materials you can find.

We understand that sometimes, a specific UX design course isn’t the best option. Sometimes, people want to learn at their own pace and discover things on their own. In these cases books, podcasts, blogs and video tutorials become precious learning materials. But here is the issue: with such an abundance of materials to learn from, it can all seem a little intimidating at first.

That’s why we, here at Justinmind, put together this list of great UX and UI design tutorials. Going from long videos that get into the nitty-gritty details to short videos that give an overview of key aspects of design. Visual design, theory of UX, using a UI design tool to create deliverables – the journey starts here!

If these tutorials give you a better understanding of the theory of UI design, why not go ahead and find some real inspiration? Check out this list of incredible UI examples.

This UX design tutorial is brought to us by CareerFoundry. It’s short and to the point, with many comments saying the video works as a great introduction to the world of UX design. It covers a basic question that can still confuse a lot of newbies: what is UX design? It might seem like an obvious answer to the seasoned designers among our readers. Still, it’s a valid stepping stone for anyone who is seriously considering becoming an UXer.

As an added bonus, CareerFoundry went further. Along with the video tutorial, we also found a written article that goes into a little more detail. You can find it on their What is UX design for beginners post.

This UX design tutorial is from our own team here at Justinmind! We created this video to lay down the main factors that designers have to deal with when they create wireframes. Starting from gathering the requirements, creating a list of elements that need to go into the design and going all the way to the creation of a digital wireframe. This tutorial has it all – and it’s all done with Justinmind’s wireframe tool.

In this tutorial you can appreciate the general goals of wireframing, such as creating a sound UI layout and designing a structure that the team can build on.

Another one from the Justinmind team. This UX design tutorial shows the other side of the same UX coin: the prototyping process. It’s got plenty of theory and practical tips. Things you’ll find in this brief but awesome tutorial include the role that prototypes play in the design project, what they usually include and a step-by-step list of how prototypes are built. This tutorial makes for a great overview of the entire prototyping aspect of UX projects.

Want something a bit more specific? We also have guides that explore common and beloved UI patterns that designers use often in their products as well in-depth looks at specific types of design:

• Cards UI 
• List UI
• Dashboard Design
• Game UI 

This is another great example of a UI design tutorial that goes into a lot of depth – especially for beginners in the UX game. The 2019 UI design crash course has a duration of about one hour and a half, and covers everything from the basics of what UX and UI are, what are the main tools that designers use and some crucial design concepts that every UXer needs. Things like visual hierarchy, white space and consistency are all covered.

This is a wonderful UX design tutorial for beginners. In Defining User Experience and Explaining the Process, we have a video that doesn’t just tell users what UX is. It shows them. The two presenters, Jose and Chris, explain the basics while doing a redesign for a website. It’s great, because it gives people context and allows them to see some UX work being done right in front of them – making this a wonderful tutorial!

This UI design tutorial is all about mobile. If you’re only just starting in the design game, it can be a bit challenging to imagine the jump between web and mobile-based products. That’s why it can help to watch it being done right in front of you. The Mobile App Design Tutorial is done using Photoshop, which means that you’d have to import the design into a prototyping tool to make it interactive – but it’s still a wonderful and practical tutorial.

The UX Design: How To Get Started tutorial is slightly less than half an hour in duration, but it works as a crash course for those looking to learn the basics. Among the comments, you can find people describing the video as a golden resource – probably because it goes further than covering basic concepts. In this UX design tutorial, our presenter goes through a list of steps that anyone can take in order to get started as a UX designer. Practical advice is often hard to find for free!

This video tutorial is, perhaps, the one that covers the most ground. With a duration of nearly 4 hours, this UX tutorial offers a lot of value to beginners. Going from the many elements that consist of UX design, the UX Fundamentals video also covers the classic tools that designers rely on, how the deliverables are created and their function in the entire workflow. It’s a bit dense, but very informative!

Created as a part of the Google UX Design Certificate, this UX design tutorial doesn’t just stick to design concepts. Foundations of UX covers the more practical side for people looking to get into the industry. The video talks about main roles that take part in UX, what their responsibilities are and the dynamic of a cross-functional team in the game. All of this comes from Google employees – suffice to say, they know their stuff!

This makes for an interesting UX design tutorial. The video doesn’t dwell on basic design concepts or color palettes. Instead, it chooses a topic that has beginners curious: how to prepare your design portfolio. After all, with all the time and effort invested into learning UX design and tuning their design skills, people need to know how to display their work. Even if you’re not quite there yet, knowing the broad strokes of how you could showcase your designs is always good knowledge.

This brief but complete UX design tutorial is all about UX designers. It covers what the main face of UX design is, what it entails – but focuses on the profession itself. What do UX designers do? What are the kind of things they touch on a daily basis? The UX crash course tutorial is very concise and clear, which makes it perfect for those trying to get an idea of how well they’d fit into the shoes of a UXer.

This UX design tutorial comes in two parts, with the first being one hour long and the second almost reaching two hours. Together, they offer a very complete view into the basics of UX design and what UX designers do. The UX Design tutorial for Beginners 2018 goes from forming ideas and starting projects, all the way to prototyping, testing and adding interaction to designs. It has earned quite a bit of praise from people on the comment sections, who all highlight the insight that the tutorial offers.

This is another UX design tutorial that focuses on helping people understand what it takes to become a UX designer. Not necessarily focusing on what UX design is, this is a tutorial for those looking for practical steps on making that leap. Offering people concrete steps that can help them land a job in the field, the How To Get Started (For Beginners) has people praising the video on the comment section.

UX design is a surprisingly diverse field. Truly good products are a result of more than visual design and smart navigation patterns. This UX design tutorial on how to conduct research analysis covers all the crucial aspects from collecting data all the way to identifying insights. This UX design tutorial gives us a bit of context and a better idea of just how diverse UX can be.

Having a good portfolio of your work is a must for any UX designer, but because UX projects can take on many forms it can be tough to display it all. In the tutorial Create a killer UX design portfolio, we go over things like how to find the right format, how to bring storytelling into the fold and how to display data. It’s a great video, filled with crucial information that is broken down and easy to process.

User personas are key in any UX project. For someone looking to get into the industry, the idea of a user persona can seem a little strange at first but this UX tutorial makes it easy to understand. How to create a user persona is a short UX design tutorial but it lays down all the theory of why personas are so important, what elements they need to include and how to put it all together. Great stuff!

This video is little over half an hour long, and works great for people looking to understand the process of creating a website. The UI design tutorial is all about what it takes to establish a concept, create wireframes and get started on creating a prototype. It goes to show that there’s a lot of preparation before designers can start to create high-fidelity prototypes!

This video is short but sweet and to the point. How to learn UI design is all about getting people to see possible paths to the UX life. What to study, how and where as well as the key things to learn are all listed in this UI design tutorial. People praise it in the comments section for how insightful and concise the presenter is!

A UX design tutorial that is all about making things visually pleasing. Creating products that users love is also about making sure the functionality presents a certain beauty, and this video can help new designers achieve that. How to apply a color palette can help those of us who never got a formal education in design to secure a very precious skill.

Another great UX tutorial on sketching website designs. This one is all about the preparation and planning you need to do before you can start sketching out a UI wireframe that captures your ideas. We love that the presenter breaks down the why and how of why this planning is necessary, making the How to sketch wireframes tutorial a great resource for newcomers.

User research is another pillar of UX design. While some companies have their own research teams, many times it falls on designers themselves to carry out research for their projects. That’s why knowing the basics on UX research is a must-have skill for designers. In UX user research 101 the presenter goes over the theory, the available methods and the general goals of each research study.

Just like knowing the best way to present your work, it’s important to feel prepared for an eventual interview. After all, making that leap can feel really intimidating at first. That’s why we included the common UX designer interview questions as a great UX design tutorial for newbies. Even if you’re not ready to go on an interview just yet, it’s nice to start thinking about potential answers to your questions.

User flows are another key aspect of UX design. Knowing the exact path users will need to take in order to achieve goals is crucial for a flawless user experience – which makes this tutorial a must-watch. The User flow tutorial is short and sweet, showcasing now just the theory of user flows but also how the presenter herself uses them in her projects.

This quick UX tutorial tries to pin down exactly what wireframes are and their role in the product design process in under four minutes. Wireframing for UX is a very visual tutorial that shows us the simple and central reasons why designers aren’t willing to forego wireframes. The video itself is a few years old, but even as things rapidly change we find that the tutorial is still very much accurate and relevant to new designers today!

Another one from the folks over at Google. This UX design tutorial is about getting your ideas down on paper and evolving the design quickly as you move through different takes. The presenters show the process of sketching so that it’s done efficiently and renders results that designers can then transform into a digital wireframe and later on a prototype. Rapid Prototyping is all about that initial stage when designers can see many possible designs in their mind, and we love it!

This is a different take on a UX tutorial. The UX design industry is all about creating new experiences that evoke different feelings and trigger actions from users. It’s undeniable that UX deals with psychology – that’s why we decided to include this resource in this list. The psychology behind UI/UX design offers some great insight into why designers create things the way they do – making it an awesome UX design tutorial.

Another great UX design tutorial that tries to pin down exactly what UX is. We like that this tutorial doesn’t necessarily explain the world of UX with digital apps and design slang. We love that the presenter, instead, focuses on the user experience of everyday things – tangible things like coffee mugs. What is UX design makes for a great introduction into the main idea that UX isn’t just for websites, but for everything that people use.

This UX design tutorial isn’t about practical steps that we can follow at home. This one is all about theory, but it covers an aspect of design that is more important than most newbies realize: data. The relationship between data and UX is a great TED talk that helps us understand why so many designers spend so much time looking at statistics. It helps us see why understanding user behaviour can make a huge difference.

User personas are a very popular tool for UX designers everywhere. They have the power to take an abstract concept (the final user) and transform it into something tangible: a user persona. They can help designers stay on track, fine-tune their design decisions and create a generally better product. What are user personas is brought to you by our friends over at IDF – which is a gem itself when it comes to UX resources.

Unlike some of the other tutorials on this list, this one doesn’t really go over the theory of UX research. Instead, this UX design tutorial is all about the different UX methods of research that design teams rely on for their projects. It’s quick, with a duration of only about seven minutes but it’s very illuminating.

Information architecture (IA) is an important building block of any digital product – but it can also be intimidating upon first encounter. After all, the information architecture will have a big impact on the product’s navigation, visual hierarchy and overall user experience. That’s why we love a beginner’s guide to IA by the folks at CareerFoundry. The tutorial makes the information easy to understand, simplifying the most complex aspects of this crucial building block.

This UX design tutorial has a very interesting approach. Instead of trying to focus on the specifics of UX, like information architecture or research, it goes for a broad stroke. The video focuses on three key principles in web design that all contribute to new designs – like three pillars that allow the entire thing to stand tall. Navigation, hierarchy and color are explored in this brief tutorial, making it a very interesting watch for those looking to get a better idea of what separates good design from bad.

This UX design tutorial can be really helpful to those who have plenty of ideas but aren’t clear on the practical steps to implement them. The presenter shows her own process for sketching out parts of the design and then recreate them in a wireframing tool. How to wireframe a website has earned a lot of praise from people who say they were stuck or unclear about putting a product design together.

This is a UI design tutorial that doesn’t focus too much on the theory of putting a design together. Instead, the Beginner Tutorial focuses on a more practical approach of implementing a design in a brand new wireframe using the Balsamiq wireframing tool. We like this tutorial, because it goes to show that the tool you use has a great impact on the final result. It’s true that certain tools have a limit to how much fidelity you can inject in the wireframe, which means designers must consider their chosen tool carefully.

We know getting into a brand new industry isn’t easy. It takes time, effort and commitment – but it doesn’t have to be expensive. The internet is filled with incredible resources that can be accessed for free, and give you a true understanding of the game and how you can join in.

It’s true that there’s plenty of nonsense in the internet about UX design, which is why finding reliable sources of information is part of the battle. Hopefully, this list of awesome UX tutorials will give you plenty of material to study on your journey to become a UX designer! If you want to step up on your design skills, go ahead and read our guide to accessibility design.