Designers’ Routine: 25 UI/UX Design Websites You Must Know

Are you always looking forward to finding the perfect pattern, the best design tools, and the coolest color combinations? We know, the standard of the so-called “perfect” is differentiated according to the diversified requirements of each designer. What if there is a list including almost all the design resources or websites you wanted?

Dear friend, don’t worry, you’ll find an answer in this list.

Color Inspiration

Worrying on finding perfect colors? No color inspiration? Check out these websites:

1. Flat UI Color Picker — A great resource for flat design. Colors grouped by category.

2. ColourLovers — A creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes and patterns, discuss the latest trends and explore colorful articles.

3. Material Palette — Choose your favorite colors and get your Material Design palette generated and downloadable.

4. Color by Hailpixel — A simple and wonderful resource. Simply back & forth for hue, up & down for lightness, and scroll for saturation.

5. Coolors — Generate perfect color combinations for your designs.

6. ColRd — Find the images for you according to colors, gradients, palettes and other information.

7. Color Hunter — Help you to find the top five colors inside your pictures you uploaded.

8. BrandColors — Summarize the brands’ color scheme for you.

9. ColorKit — A productivity tool for color management.

10. TinEye Labs — TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image recognition technology. Given an image to search for, TinEye tells you where and how that image appears all over the web — even if it has been modified.

Design Community

The design community is the best platform for UI/UX designers to learn and discuss the latest design trend. So you should be in a design community where designers learn and help each other to grow. You can get feedback even on the most challenging project.

1. Behance — Behance is always a great place for designers to go to get improvement.

2. Dribble — Dribbble is a place to show and tell, promote, discover, and explore design.

3. Flickr –Flickr is a great community to find designers, share photos and design works, also you can get inspired from other designers.

4. The Web Blend — An online community platform for designers, developers, and technology enthusiasts.

5. Graphic Design Forum — A great medium to immerse yourself into the graphic design community

6. DeviantArt — The largest online art gallery and community creating the cultural context for how art is created, discovered, and shared.

7. DreamInCode — Articles, tutorials, and forums for web developers and programmers.

UX Design Podcast

It’s a good idea to listen to UX design podcast when you are running or jogging, right?

1. Design Matters with Debbie Millman — The first, also one of the best podcast on design topic.

2. The Big Web Show — The host Jeffrey Zeldman will interview professional visual designers, developers, user experience designers, and entrepreneurs.

3. UIE Brain Sparks — Different with Big Web Show which focuses on visual design, front-end developing, topics of UIE Brain Sparks are more focus on UX design.

4. UX Podcast — Impromptu, unplanned interviews always inspire you to view information architecture and user experience design with a new perspective.

5. On the Grid — Weekly podcast covers design topic.

Prototyping/wireframing Design

As we know, prototyping/wireframing is the bridge between interaction designers, project manager, and the website developers, also a crucial step on the developing of a website or mobile app. Here are the most popular prototyping/wireframing tools. (You may also interested in: Basic UI/UX Design Concept Difference Between Wireframe & Prototype)

1. Axure RP（Mac & Win）

Axure RP is a desktop application that allows designers to create, test, and share interactive prototypes. Been called as the most comprehensive (in terms of functionality) prototyping tools, it’s an ideal desktop software for both static, low-fidelity prototypes and more sophisticated, interactive prototypes. As an extremely professional UX tool, Axure requires a steep learning curve.

2. Justinmind（Mac & Win）

Justinmind prototype is a flexible tool that supports Web and mobile application prototyping and high-fidelity prototyping. Gesture support features make it even better in mobile application design. However, due to the complexity of variables and functions, it’s more difficult for novice.

3. Mockplus（Mac & Win）

Mockplus is an all-inclusive rapid prototyping tool supports for the mainstream platforms of PC, website, and mobile device. The packaged interactions components and creative preview method allow designers to design and preview within minutes. It is a solid prototyping app for professional designers who want to produce high-quality prototypes but without too much long learning curve.

(A full list of prototyping tools & apps collection for reference.)

Since I have compiled some UI / UX books and resources on my last article, in this one, I mainly focus on some practical design tools, community, podcast and color resources. We will continue to update, and collect more excellent resources. And, this is an active conversation. If you think any resource that must be added to this list, let me know in the comments below. Sharing is caring, don’t forget to share it with your friends.