Starting this month, I'm dedicating the next few months to learning UI/UX design properly — not just tools, but the underlying psychology and process behind good design decisions. The roadmap below is based on the UX Design roadmap from roadmap.sh (see the PDF above), organized into what I'm focusing on now and what I'll pick up later.

Phase Focus Topics
Now Foundations — why users behave the way they do, and how to define a product around that Human Decision Making, Behavior Change Strategies, Understanding the Product, Conceptual Design
Later Execution — turning those foundations into an actual designed, tested product Prototyping, UX Best Practices, Measuring the Impact

1. Understanding Human Decision Making (Now)

The starting point of UX: understanding why people act the way they do before trying to design for it.

Frameworks

  • BJ Fogg's Behavior Model — behavior happens when Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt converge at the same moment.
  • Stephen Wendel's CREATE Action Funnel — Cue, Reaction, Evaluation, Ability, Timing.
  • Spectrum of Thinking Interventions — where a design sits between automatic and reflective thinking.
  • Dual Process Theory — the split between fast/intuitive thinking and slow/deliberate thinking.

Buzzwords to know

  • Nudge Theory
  • Persuasive Technology
  • Behavioral Science
  • Behavior Design
  • Behavioral Economics

2. Behavior Change Strategies (Now)

Once you understand decision-making, the next question is: how do you actually help a user change what they do? Start with BJ Fogg's Behavior Grid to classify the kind of change you're designing for, then pick a strategy.

Support Conscious Action

  • Educate & encourage the user
  • Help the user think about their action

Cheating

  • Defaulting
  • Make it incidental
  • Automate the act of repetition

Make or Change a Habit

For a new behavior — build the habit using:

  • Nir Eyal's Hook Model
  • Charles Duhigg's Cue → Routine → Reward Model

For an existing behavior — break the old habit using:

  • Help the user avoid the cue
  • Replace the routine
  • Cleverly use consciousness to interfere
  • Use mindfulness to avoid acting on the cue
  • Crowd out the old habit with a new behavior

3. Understanding the Product (Now)

Clarify the Product

  • Target outcome — what is the product supposed to accomplish?
  • Target actor — who will use the product?
  • Target action — how will the user do it?

Define Target Users

  • Create user personas

Business Model

Existing business model:

  • Business Model Canvas — by Alexander Osterwalder
  • Lean Canvas

New business model:

  • Business Model Inspirator — by Orange Hills
  • Competitor analysis
  • Five Forces Model
  • SWOT analysis

4. Conceptual Design (Now)

Things to look out for

  • KISS — keep it short and simple
  • Make it easy to understand and complete
  • Make progress visible to the user
  • Make progress meaningful, to reward the user
  • Make successful completion clearly visible

Deliverables

  • Customer Experience Map — by Mel Edwards
  • Simple flowchart
  • Event-driven Process Chain model (EPC)
  • Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN)
  • Create a product backlog
  • User stories

5. Prototyping (Later)

Wireframing tools

  • Figma
  • Adobe XD
  • Sketch
  • Balsamiq

Good layout rules

  • goodui.org

UX Patterns

When attention is fleeting and scarce:

  • Call to action
  • How-to tips
  • Status reports
  • Reminders & planning prompts

When you have many chances to influence the user:

  • Decision-making support
  • Behavior change games
  • Gamification
  • Planners
  • Reminders
  • Social sharing
  • Goal trackers
  • Tutorials

6. UX Best Practices (Later)

Getting the user's attention

  • Tell the user what the action is and ask for it
  • Clear the page of distractions
  • Make it clear where to act

Getting a positive, intuitive reaction

  • Make the UI professional and beautiful
  • Deploy social proof
  • Display strong authority on the subject
  • Be authentic and personal

Get a favorable, conscious evaluation

  • Prime user-relevant associations
  • Leverage loss aversion
  • Use peer comparisons
  • Use competition
  • Avoid cognitive overhead
  • Avoid choice overload
  • Avoid direct payments

Make sure users can easily do it

  • Elicit implementation intentions
  • Default everything
  • Lessen the burden of action / information
  • Deploy peer comparisons

Creating urgency to act now

  • Frame text to avoid temporal myopia
  • Remind of prior commitment to act
  • Make a commitment to friends
  • Make the reward scarce

7. Measuring the Impact (Later)

Testing

  • Incremental A/B testing
  • Multivariate testing

Then close the loop: gather lessons, prioritize, and integrate them back into the product.

Related roadmaps to explore afterwards: Design System, Frontend.