UX-Design
Design Resources
A curated list of design resources from design templates, stock photos, icons, colors, and much more
Table of Contents
General
Colors
Illustrations
Stock Photos
Icons
General
Hand-picked resources for web designer and developers, constantly updated.
Icons, UI Kits, Wireframes, iOS, Android Templates for Sketch
Explore, install, use, and remix thousands of files and plugins
Unlimited UI Kits, Icons, Templates, Themes and More (free & premium )
Tasty design resources made with care for each pixel. Free for both personal & commercial use
Browse our library of free, high-quality UI kits, icon packs, and mockups
The best collection of free resources for UX / UI Designer
Free Figma library of products, elements, and screens
A curated Figma resources, UI kits, templates & freebies to save you time and speed up your workflow
Free PSD, AI, Fonts and more
Handpicked collection of web design & UI inspiration with code snippets.
A collection of repeatable SVG background patterns for you to use on your web projects.
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Colors
A color palette generator
Generate or browse beautiful color combinations for your designs
Colormind is a color scheme generator that uses deep learning. It can learn color styles from photographs, movies, and popular art.
a free and open platform for color inspiration with thousands of trendy hand-picked color palettes
Create and share color palettes for your UI, and measure the accessibility of any color combination.
Generate nice color palettes from one color
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Illustrations
Open-source illustrations for any idea you can imagine and create.
Hand-drawn vector illustration and icon resources, perfect for your next project.
Free customizable illustrations with Figma Plugin
Free illustrations for 404 pages
Hand drawn illustration library
Free surrealist illustrations and vector art
2,500+ royalty-free and editable illustrations to power up your design projects
Avatar Illustrations Sketch Library
Collection of high-resolution vector or illustrations background images for modern websites and landing pages
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Stock Photos
Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project
Download and use the best free stock photos and videos.
The #1 source for beautiful free photos. High quality and high resolution stock images free from all copyright restrictions (CC0)
More than 2.2 million Stunning Free Images and video to Use Anywhere
Free stock photos for websites and commercial use
free stock photos, backgrounds and free high-resolution images for personal and commercial use
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Icons
Simply beautiful open source icons
Download 30,000 free PNG icons for website, web app, software, web design
Delightful, beautifully crafted symbols for common actions and items
The world’s most popular and easiest to use icon set
set of open-source neutral-style system symbols elaborately crafted for designers and developers
Browse over 3 million art-quality icons and photos
Open-source CSS, SVG and Figma UI Icons that are available in SVG Sprite, styled-components, NPM & API
fully customisable & accessible vector icons
A set of over 1250 free MIT-licensed high-quality SVG icons for you to use in your web projects.
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Visibility of system status
The system should keep users informed through appropriate feedback within reasonable time
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users' language rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions
User control and freedom
Users often make mistakes and need 'emergency exits' to leave the unwanted state. Support undo and redo
Consistency and standards
Users shouldn't have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions
Error prevention
Prevent problems from occuring in the first place, or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action
Recognition rather than recall
Minimize memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. Instructions should be visible or easily retrievable
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators - unseen by the novice user - may often speed up the interaction for the expert user. Allow users to tailor frequent actions
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed
Help recognize & recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language, indicate the problem, and suggest a solution
Help and documentation
Any necessary help documentation should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large
UX Patterns
UX Patterns: Modeling an Experience
Once we narrow our focus to UI/UX, the difference between a UX pattern and a UI pattern becomes subtle. Why is that?
Think about our definition of pattern—a recipe for a solution to a common problem.
So much of what we design and build for a user experience is via a user interface. So naturally, a pattern to solve a user experience problem will often involve a user interface pattern.
But let's start by considering the general ways we can understand and start to model a user experience—the knowledge we have about what drives positive product experiences.
Jakob's Law
Users spend most of their time on _other_** sites.** This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Note that Nielsen isn't just talking about the way websites look—he's referring to how they work. In other words, in general, a user's experience with a website will be better if they don't have to learn new ways to interact with it. What's the takeaway here? Use UX patterns!
Nonetheless, when you're designing a product and thinking about your user's experience, it can be a very useful rule of thumb: don't reinvent the wheel. Default to the "boring" way to let your user experience your product—then think about ways to tweak that experience if it makes sense for your product's goals.
The Hook Model
The Hook model divides a user's interaction and experience with a product into four phases:
A trigger to start using it
An action that "satisfies" the trigger
A reward for the action
An "investment" that makes the product more valuable to the user
Taken together, these phases of the Hook Model are a UX pattern. We're predicting ways that users will become engaged with our product via an experience we can engineer.
One thing to note here, however—the Hook Model focuses on optimizing products for engagement—it doesn't necessarily optimize products for quality. In any case, though, keep it in mind as a valuable way to build a product experience that will keep users coming back.
Gamification
Gamification is incorporating game-like reward features into a product that isn't nominally a game.
To drive positive product experiences, you'll want to ensure you're motivating your users, not manipulating them—and that you're not relying on gamification alone to make the user experience great.
The List Goes On...
There are hundreds of UX patterns out there, like:
ways to give feedback to the user
ways to increase or decrease choices for the user
ways to rely on or assist users' memory
We've barely scratched the surface—but hopefully, these examples give you an idea of the work that has been done to understand user experiences, and to synthesize that knowledge into formulas for product success.
UI Patterns
UI Patterns: Implementing Paradigms
Now that we've examined general approaches to user experience problems, we can take some of those paradigms—models for thinking about things—and see how we can implement them via user interfaces.
Common UI Patterns
These frequently-used UI patterns combine structure, organization, and interaction behavior to meet users where they are and provide predictable, minimum-friction experiences. You'll almost certainly immediately recognize them!
Pagination
Pagination is splitting content up into pages. These aren't necessary separate screens or webpages—you'll usually deal with pagination when you're working with tables:
Pagination helps us avoid putting too much information in front of our users at once.
Note that to implement pagination, your product will often need to adjust the way it queries a database—we'll probably only want to retrieve the "page" of data we're interested in displaying. This is called query pagination. Pagination is thus a great example of how designing a user interface based on a user experience can result in a full-stack engineering feature—the frontend and the backend will need to accommodate paginated queries in order to present this experience to the user.
Progressive Disclosure
Progressive disclosure is waiting to show content and/or prompt the user for action until it's needed. As the user continues toward a goal, they complete the process gradually. Pagination is an example of progressive disclosure!
Another example of progressive disclosure is using lazy forms—forms whose fields only appear once the user has filled in the previous field (or set of fields):
A related concept is using wizards—walking the user through a process, with input fields or other required actions showing over multiple pages or screens:
Progressive disclosure prevents users from being intimidated by having to go through a lot of information or perform a lot of actions at once.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are a very common UI pattern where we display a "secondary" navigation system to the user based on where they are in a hierarchy of pages or screens.
Note the breadcrumbs below (New Items → Popular → On Sale):
Breadcrumbs both orient the user and allow them to navigate in context.
In order to be usefully orienting, breadcrumbs should be based on the actual page or screen hierarchy (the way the content is actually organized) rather than whatever way the user has happened to navigate around (their history). That's because showing the hierarchy gives the user more information about how your product's content is structured.
Empty States
Empty states are an extremely useful pattern that tells the user: "There's nothing here right now—but there could be!"
Empty states are highly orienting for users, because it tells them both how they should be interacting with your product, and what to expect both in the short term and the long term.
If your users will land on a screen where data could be displayed, but there currently isn't anything to show them—you'll almost certainly want to show them an empty state.
Further Reading
There's no way we could list out all the possible UI patterns available—there are probably thousands!
To see more and learn more about UI patterns, check out these resources:
Accessibility:
There are three levels of accessibility compliance in the WCAG, which reflect the priority of support:
A: EssentialIf this isn't met, assistive technology may not be able to read, understand, or fully operate the page or view.
AAA: Specialized SupportThis is typically reserved for parts of websites and web apps that serve a specialized audience.
This checklist targets many, but not all level A and AA concerns. Note that the different levels of WCAG support do not necessarily indicate an increased level of difficulty to implement.
Success criteria
Some accessibility issues may have multiple success criterion apply to them. We have identified the one most relevant for each checklist item.
Does this checklist guarantee my site is accessible?
No. However, addressing the issues called out in this checklist will help improve the experience for everyone who uses your site.
Content
Content is the most important part of your site.
Task: Use plain language and avoid figures of speech, idioms, and complicated metaphors.
Use plain language and avoid figures of speech, idioms, and complicated metaphors.
Task: Make sure that button, a, and label element content is unique and descriptive.
Make sure that button, a, and label element content is unique and descriptive.
Terms like "click here" and "read more" do not provide any context. Some people navigate using a list of all buttons or links on a page or view. When using this mode, the terms indicate what will happen if navigated to or activated.
Task: Use left-aligned text for left-to-right (LTR) languages, and right-aligned text for right-to-left (RTL) languages.
Use left-aligned text for left-to-right (LTR) languages, and right-aligned text for right-to-left (RTL) languages.
Centered-aligned or justified text is difficult to read.
Global code
Global code is code that affects your entire website or web app.
Task: Validate your HTML.
Validate your HTML.
Task: Use a lang attribute on the html element.
Use a lang attribute on the html element.
Task: Provide a unique title for each page or view.
Provide a unique title for each page or view.
Task: Ensure that viewport zoom is not disabled.
Ensure that viewport zoom is not disabled.
Task: Use landmark elements to indicate important content regions.
Use landmark elements to indicate important content regions.
Task: Ensure a linear content flow.
Ensure a linear content flow.
Remove tabindex attribute values that aren't either 0 or -1. Elements that are inherently focusable, such as links or button elements, do not require a tabindex. Elements that are not inherently focusable should not have a tabindex applied to them outside of very specific use cases.
Task: Avoid using the autofocus attribute.
Avoid using the autofocus attribute.
People who are blind or who have low vision may be disoriented when focus is moved without their permission. Additionally, autofocus can be problematic for people with motor control disabilities, as it may create extra work for them to navigate out from the autofocused area and to other locations on the page/view.
Task: Allow extending session timeouts
Allow extending session timeouts
If you cannot remove session timeouts altogether, then let the person using your site easily turn off, adjust, or extend their session well before it ends.
Task: Remove title attribute tooltips.
Remove title attribute tooltips.
Keyboard
It is important that your interface and content can be operated, and navigated by use of a keyboard. Some people cannot use a mouse, or may be using other assistive technologies that may not allow for hovering or precise clicking.
Task: Make sure there is a visible focus style for interactive elements that are navigated to via keyboard input.
Make sure there is a visible focus style for interactive elements that are navigated to via keyboard input.
Task: Check to see that keyboard focus order matches the visual layout.
Check to see that keyboard focus order matches the visual layout.
Task: Remove invisible focusable elements.
Remove invisible focusable elements.
Images
Images are a very common part of most websites. Help make sure they can be enjoyed by all.
Task: Make sure that all img elements have an alt attribute.
Make sure that all img elements have an alt attribute.
alt attributes (alt text) give a description of an image for people who may not be able to view them. When an alt attribute isn't present on an image, a screen reader may announce the image's file name and path instead. This fails to communicate the image's content.
Task: Make sure that decorative images use null alt (empty) attribute values.
Make sure that decorative images use null alt (empty) attribute values.
Task: Provide a text alternative for complex images such as charts, graphs, and maps.
Provide a text alternative for complex images such as charts, graphs, and maps.
Is there a plain text which lists points on the map or sections of a flowchart? Describe all visible information. This includes graph axes, data points and labels, and the overall point the graphic is communicating.
Task: For images containing text, make sure the alt description includes the image's text.
For images containing text, make sure the alt description includes the image's text.
For example, the FedEx logo should have an alt value of "FedEx."
Headings
Heading elements (h1, h2, h3, etc.) help break up the content of the page into related "chunks" of information. They are incredibly important for helping people who use assistive technology to understand the meaning of a page or view.
Task: Use heading elements to introduce content.
Use heading elements to introduce content.
Heading elements construct a document outline, and should not be used for purely visual design.
Task: Use only one h1 element per page or view.
Use only one h1 element per page or view.
The h1 element should be used to communicate the high-level purpose of the page or view. Do not use the h1 element for a heading that does not change between pages or views (for example, the site's name).
Task: Heading elements should be written in a logical sequence.
Heading elements should be written in a logical sequence.
Task: Don't skip heading levels.
Don't skip heading levels.
For example, don't jump from a h2 to a h4, skipping a h3 element. If heading levels are being skipped for a specific visual treatment, use CSS classes instead.
Lists
Lists elements let people know a collection of items are related and if they are sequential, and how many items are present in the list grouping.
Task: Use list elements (ol, ul, and dl elements) for list content.
Use list elements (ol, ul, and dl elements) for list content.
This may include sections of related content, items visually displayed in a grid-like layout, or sibling a elements.
Controls
Controls are interactive elements such as links and buttons that let a person navigate to a destination or perform an action.
Task: Use the a element for links.
Use the a element for links.
Links should always have a href attribute, even when used in Single Page Applications (SPAs). Without a href attribute, the link will not be properly exposed to assistive technology. An example of this would be a link that uses an onclick event, in place of a href attribute.
Task: Ensure that links are recognizable as links.
Ensure that links are recognizable as links.
Color alone is not sufficient to indicate the presence of a link. Underlines are a popular and commonly-understood way to communicate the presence of link content.
Task: Ensure that controls have :focus states.
Ensure that controls have :focus states.
Visible focus styles help people determine which interactive element has keyboard focus. This lets them know that they can perform actions like activating a button or navigating to a link's destination.
Task: Use the button element for buttons.
Use the button element for buttons.
Buttons are used to submit data or perform an on-screen action which does not shift keyboard focus. You can add type="button" to a button element to prevent the browser from attempting to submit form information when activated.
Task: Provide a skip link and make sure that it is visible when focused.
Provide a skip link and make sure that it is visible when focused.
Task: Identify links that open in a new tab or window.
Identify links that open in a new tab or window.
Ideally, avoid links that open in a new tab or window. If a link does, ensure the link's behavior will be communicated in a way that is apparent to all users. Doing this will help people understand what will happen before activating the link. While this technique is technically not required for compliance, it is an often-cited area of frustration for many different kinds of assistive technology users.
Tables
Tables are a structured set of data that help people understand the relationships between different types of information.
Task: Use the table element to describe tabular data.
Use the table element to describe tabular data.
Do you need to display data in rows and columns? Use the table element.
Task: Use the th element for table headers (with appropriate scope attributes).
Use the th element for table headers (with appropriate scope attributes).
Task: Use the caption element to provide a title for the table.
Use the caption element to provide a title for the table.
The table's caption should describe what kind of information the table contains.
Forms
Forms allow people to enter information into a site for processing and manipulation. This includes things like sending messages and placing orders.
Task: All inputs in a form are associated with a corresponding label element.
All inputs in a form are associated with a corresponding label element.
Use a for/id pairing to guarantee the highest level of browser/assistive technology support.
Task: Use fieldset and legend elements where appropriate.
Use fieldset and legend elements where appropriate.
Does your form contain multiple sections of related inputs? Use fieldset to group them, and legend to provide a label for what this section is for.
Task: Inputs use autocomplete where appropriate.
Inputs use autocomplete where appropriate.
Task: Make sure that form input errors are displayed in list above the form after submission.
Make sure that form input errors are displayed in list above the form after submission.
This provides a way for assistive technology users to quickly have a high-level understanding of what issues are present in the form. This is especially important for larger forms with many inputs. Make sure that each reported error also has a link to the corresponding field with invalid input.
Task: Associate input error messaging with the input it corresponds to.
Associate input error messaging with the input it corresponds to.
Task: Make sure that error, warning, and success states are not visually communicated by just color.
Make sure that error, warning, and success states are not visually communicated by just color.
People who are color blind, who have other low vision conditions, or different cultural understandings for color may not see the state change, or understand what kind of feedback the state represents if color is the only indicator.
Media
Media includes content such as pre-recorded and live audio and video.
Task: Make sure that media does not autoplay.
Make sure that media does not autoplay.
Unexpected video and audio can be distracting and disruptive, especially for certain kinds of cognitive disability such as ADHD. Certain kinds of autoplaying video and animation can be a trigger for vestibular and seizure disorders.
Task: Ensure that media controls use appropriate markup.
Ensure that media controls use appropriate markup.
Task: Check to see that all media can be paused.
Check to see that all media can be paused.
Provide a global pause function on any media element. If the device has a keyboard, ensure that pressing the Space key can pause playback. Make sure you also don't interfere with the Space key's ability to scroll the page/view when not focusing on a form control.
Video
Video-specific checks.
Task: Confirm the presence of captions.
Confirm the presence of captions.
Captions allow a person who cannot hear the audio content of a video to still understand its content.
Task: Remove seizure triggers.
Remove seizure triggers.
Certain kinds of strobing or flashing animations will trigger seizures.
Audio
Audio-specific checks.
Task: Confirm that transcripts are available.
Confirm that transcripts are available.
Transcripts allow people who cannot hear to still understand the audio content. It also allows people to digest audio content at a pace that is comfortable to them.
Appearance
How your website app content looks in any given situation.
Task: Check your content in specialized browsing modes.
Check your content in specialized browsing modes.
Task: Increase text size to 200%.
Increase text size to 200%.
Is the content still readable? Does increasing the text size cause content to overlap?
Task: Double-check that good proximity between content is maintained.
Double-check that good proximity between content is maintained.
Task: Make sure color isn't the only way information is conveyed.
Make sure color isn't the only way information is conveyed.
Can you still see where links are among body content if everything is grayscale?
Task: Make sure instructions are not visual or audio-only.
Make sure instructions are not visual or audio-only.
Use a combination of characteristics to write cues, particularly the actual names of sections and elements, rather than just descriptions like location ("on the right") or audio ("after the tone").
Task: Use a simple, straightforward, and consistent layout.
Use a simple, straightforward, and consistent layout.
A complicated layout can be confusing to understand and use.
Animation
Content that moves, either on its own, or when triggered by a person activating a control.
Task: Ensure animations are subtle and do not flash too much.
Ensure animations are subtle and do not flash too much.
Certain kinds of strobing or flashing animations will trigger seizures. Others may be distracting and disruptive, especially for certain kinds of cognitive disability such as ADHD.
Task: Provide a mechanism to pause background video.
Provide a mechanism to pause background video.
Background video can be distracting, especially if content is placed over it.
Task: Make sure all animation obeys the prefers-reduced-motion media query.
Make sure all animation obeys the prefers-reduced-motion media query.
Remove animations when the "reduce motion" setting is activated. If an animation is necessary to communicate meaning for a concept, slow its duration down.
Color contrast
Task: Check the contrast for all normal-sized text.
Check the contrast for all normal-sized text.
Level AA compliance requires a contrast ratio of 4.5:1.
Task: Check the contrast for all large-sized text.
Check the contrast for all large-sized text.
Level AA compliance requires a contrast ratio of 3:1.
Task: Check the contrast for all icons.
Check the contrast for all icons.
Level AA compliance requires a contrast ratio of 3.0:1.
Task: Check the contrast of borders for input elements (text input, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc.).
Check the contrast of borders for input elements (text input, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc.).
Level AA compliance requires a contrast ratio of 3.0:1.
Task: Check text that overlaps images or video.
Check text that overlaps images or video.
Is text still legible?
Task: Check custom ::selection colors.
Check custom ::selection colors.
Mobile and touch
Things to check mobile experiences for.
Task: Check that the site can be rotated to any orientation.
Check that the site can be rotated to any orientation.
Does the site only allow portrait orientation?
Task: Remove horizontal scrolling.
Remove horizontal scrolling.
Requiring someone to scroll horizontally can be difficult for some, irritating for all.
Task: Ensure that button and link icons can be activated with ease.
Ensure that button and link icons can be activated with ease.
It's good to make sure things like hamburger menus, social icons, gallery viewers, and other touch controls are usable by a wide range of hand and stylus sizes.
Task: Ensure sufficient space between interactive items in order to provide a scroll area.
Ensure sufficient space between interactive items in order to provide a scroll area.
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