Aug 14, 2014

20 UX Designers to Follow on Twitter

Rajit Dasgupta
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Lists, UX
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Are you a budding (or established) UX designer, who digs the occasional bit of insight or inspiration from experts to get the creative juices flowing? Well, Twitter is a tremendous way to hear from and connect with the very best in any field, including UX design.

Of course, finding the right people to follow on Twitter can be like trying to find needle in a haystack. So we decided to make it easy for you and give you a head start by curating a list of awesome UX designers who share interesting insights and links. Follow these 20 people on Twitter to keep up with the latest and greatest in UX Design.

 

1. Luke Wroblewski

Luke is a web thought leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 700 million people. Formerly VP Design at Yahoo, he now runs a startup called Input Factory which is focused on creating big value from micro mobile interactions. He has written three books on web design and even has a Youtube series on UX.

 

2. David Armano

Currently Director of Global Strategy at Edelman Digital, he has almost two decades of experience in digital marketing and branding and advising companies like HP, Ebay and Adidas. In addition, he is a prolific writer and has contributed to HBR and Bloomberg Businessweek in the past.

 

3. Chris Messina

Ever wondered who created the hashtag? Well, Chris is your guy. He was also one of the UX designers behind Google+ and co-founded Barcamp –  an international network of user-generated workshops primarily focused around technology and the web.

 

4. Ethan Marcotte

Ethan is a Boston-based web designer, who, in his own words, works at the intersection of ‘beautiful design and elegant code’. He also runs a separate twitter handle focused on responsive web-design where he curates useful links on a daily basis.

 

5. Jared Spool

A software developer and programmer, Jared founded User Interface Engineering in 1988. He has more than 15 years of experience conducting usability evaluations on a variety of products, and has also found the time to author a book on Website design.

 

6. Elliot Jay Stocks

Creative Director of Adobe @Typekit, Elliot is a designer and illustrator based in Bristol, England. He’s also the founder and editor of 8 Faces, a bi-annual printed magazine dedicated to typographic design, and co-founder of Viewport Industries — creators of Countdone, a productivity app on iOS.

 

7. Andy Budd

Andy started designing websites in 1998, has been a prominent contributor to the pioneering Web Standards movement, and is the author of a book.  He founded Clearleft, now one of the world’s leading UX design consultancies. He spends a lot of his time engaged in mentoring young designers and can be seen at numerous conferences including An Event Apart and SXSW.

 

8. Paul Boag

Paul has been working in the web for over 20 years. Since 2002, he’s been running Headscape, a digital strategy and UX firm. He also runs Boagworld, a blog and podcast that offers advice on web strategy and design.

 

9. Mike Matas

Mike has worked on some exciting projects over the past 10 years. As a young coder, he co-founded Delicious Monster, makers of the elegant cataloguing tool Delicious Library. In 2005 he went to work for Apple, where he designed user interfaces and artwork for the iPhone, the iPad and Mac OS X. He founded Push Pop Press, a publishing company bought by Facebook in 2011, and now runs design for Facebook Paper.

 

10. Joshua Porter

Joshua is currently UX Director at HubSpot, and loves making interfaces that are easy and pleasurable to use. He is a co-founder of 52 Weeks of UX (along with Joshua Brewer), a premier UX blog read by over 10,000 UX professionals. He is generous with his advice, which you will find on his blog (running since 2000) and in his bestselling book.

 

11. Aarron Walter

Apart from being the head of all things UX at Mailchimp, Aarron has written a wildly successful book called ‘Designing for Emotion’, which tells you exactly what it takes to get users to fall in love with your site. You can find an entire list of his publications on his website.

 

12. Whitney Hess

Whitney coaches companies on how to design their products more mindfully and compassionately. She writes at Pleasure & Pain and co-hosts the podcast Designing Yourself. Her life’s mission is to “put humanity back into business”. Examples of her work include United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Seamless and Boxee.

 

13. Trent Walton

Trent is one of the co-founders of Paravel, along with  Dave Rupert, Reagan Ray, and has been working and building for the web since 2002. In his spare time, he writes about what he learns on his blog and on Twitter. For more on his journey, and Paravel, read this great interview.

 

14. Ryan Singer

Ryan has been building stuff at Basecamp — an easy to use project management system for businesses — for over 10 years. You can check out his articles and talks on UX and UI on his website, Felt Presence.

 

15. Josh Brewer

In 2012, Fast Company named him one of “50 designers shaping the future of design”. Josh was previously Principal Designer at Twitter, UX director at Socialcast and is co-founder of 52 Weeks of UX along with his namesake Joshua Porter. He is also a mentor at Designer Fund, which invests in startups co-founded by designers.

 

16. Nick Finck

A UX professional who has worked in the web industry for over a decade, Nick has helped create both web and mobile experiences for Intel, Google, Adobe and Oprah.com, and is currently keeping up the good work at Amazon AWS. He has also published Digital Web Magazine an online publication for web professionals, for the past 10 years.

 

17. Mike Kus

Mike is a UK based designer who specializes in Web/UI Design, Graphic Design, Branding, Illustration & Photography. He has worked for the likes of Twitter, Microsoft, Berocca and Mailchimp among others. He is also a regular speaker at design/tech conferences.

 

18. Jesse James Garrett

Jesse, co-founder and chief creative officer of Adaptive Path, is one of the world’s most widely recognized technology product designers. In 2005, he gained worldwide attention for coining the term “Ajax” and defining the concepts behind this emerging trend in web technology. His design leadership has since been acknowledged by publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. For more, check out his website.

 

19. Wilson Miner

In 2004, Wilson helped create the original version of the Django web framework. Since then, he has worked with some great companies – Facebook, Rdio, Everyblock and Apple. If you are looking for some much needed inspiration and insight, check out his talk from the 2011 Buildconf.

 

20. Kerem Suer

After leaving his job at Fitbit to start his own design studio in 2011, Kerem Suer has worked with great design teams at MyFitnessPal, Lovely, Pinterest, Dropbox and One Kings Lane. He recently joined the Omada Health team to help rethink healthcare delivery.

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  • Thanks for including me!

    • Rajit Dasgupta

      My pleasure @chrismessina:disqus! Do share the post with your followers if you can!
      Also, we’d love to feature you in a second blog post about UX. I had sent you a mail about this. Would you be interested?

      • Sorry, not sure I ever got that email. Try again?

  • redcrew

    Thank you for sharing your list. I’m very familiar with many of the people on your list, and follow them on Twitter. I was curious how the list was selected. Can you share the criteria? A couple items I noted: the list seems to be very US/UK centered. And there’s only one woman included in the list of 20 people.

    • Rajit Dasgupta

      Thanks for the comment Deborah! Yours is a concern that has been raised by others as well.
      Two of the defining criteria we used were –
      1. No. of Twitter followers
      2. No. of tweets on educational/inspirational content related to UX.
      It goes without saying that trying to search for people on Twitter according to criteria like these is easier said than done. But I will say that the apparent one-sidedness of the list might just be a function of the current industry topography than anything else. And I hope that changes fast.
      That being said, I realise that there is a need for a more inclusive list, and that is something that we are working on – either as an edit to this one, or as a separate post and should be out soon.
      Thanks again for reaching out!