User Interfaces: Design for Humans
Like Duolingo, but for User Interfaces: Design for Humans. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
73 levels across 9 sections, about 146 minutes end to end, roughly 29 days at five minutes a day. It moves through First Impressions and Quick Wins, The Visual Toolkit, Guiding the User, Making it Interactive, Understanding the Human, Designing for Everyone, Building and Testing, Real-World Constraints, and The Logic Behind the Look. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in User Interfaces: Design for Humans
- Squinting removes fine detail to reveal visual weight
- High-contrast or large elements dominate the visual hierarchy
- The squint test helps identify if the wrong element is grabbing too much attention
- The primary call-to-action (CTA) should have the highest visual weight
- Color and size are used to guide the user's eye to the most important task
- Using the squint test to identify visual hierarchy
- Ensuring the primary action is the most prominent element
- Items placed close together are perceived as a single group
- Increasing space between unrelated sections creates a clear mental break
- Proximity is often more effective than lines or borders for showing relationships
- White space acts as a buffer that prevents the UI from feeling overwhelming
- Proximity as a grouping mechanism
- Unnecessary icons or decorative patterns can distract from the main task
- Too many competing colors make it hard for the user to know where to look first
- Using white space as a functional design tool
- Identifying visual noise that hinders user goals
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives User Interfaces: Design for Humans the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
If you squint at a page and one specific box stands out more than everything else, what is likely true?
Get it right to open this lesson and 72 more in the app.
Where User Interfaces: Design for Humans takes you
Learn to build apps and websites that people actually enjoy using. This course covers everything from visual hierarchy and button placement to the psychology of how we interact with screens.
- 1
First Impressions and Quick Wins
- The Squint Test for Layout
- Buttons That Look Like Buttons
- 2
The Visual Toolkit
- Directing the Eye with Hierarchy
- Typography for Screens
- Color with Purpose
- 3
Guiding the User
- Navigation and Wayfinding
- Search vs. Browse
- 4
Making it Interactive
- Feedback Loops
- State Changes and Transitions
- 5
Understanding the Human
- Empathy and User Personas
- Interviewing and Observing
- 6
Designing for Everyone
- Accessibility Fundamentals
- Ethical Design and Dark Patterns
- 7
Building and Testing
- Wireframing and Prototyping
- Usability Testing Basics
- 8
Real-World Constraints
- Mobile vs. Desktop Design
- Design Systems and Components
- 9
The Logic Behind the Look
- Gestalt Principles in UI
- Fitts's and Hick's Laws
9 sections · 19 units · 73 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
User Interfaces: Design for Humans is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start User Interfaces: Design for Humans today.
Download Tomo, search User Interfaces: Design for Humans, and play your first lesson in under a minute.