Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

What founders use most, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. This chapter argues you can think through a whole flow with words and crude sketches before any real design tool. Breadboarding... Basecamp Essay · 20 minute read · Starting Up Shape Up: Find the Elements (breadboarding and fat marker sketches) Ryan Singer
2. This is the book behind the whole idea that good design is affordances and feedback, the exact language in our short answer.... Don Norman Book · Book, approx 350 pages · Starting Up The Design of Everyday Things (Revised and Expanded Edition) Don Norman
3. This backs up the first three seconds claim with research: people judge a page in milliseconds, and that snap verdict is hard... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 10 min read · Starting Up First Impressions Matter: How Designers Can Support Humans' Automatic Cognitive Processing Therese Fessenden
4. The rule behind trimming your onboarding, your pricing tiers, and your menus. More choices mean slower decisions, so this card... Laws of UX Article · 5 min read · Starting Up Hick's Law Jon Yablonski
5. Why your primary button should be big and easy to reach, especially on mobile. The time to hit a target depends on its size and... Laws of UX Article · 5 min read · Starting Up Fitts's Law Jon Yablonski
6. The chunking principle that keeps forms and dashboards from overwhelming people. Working memory is limited, so you group... Laws of UX Article · 5 min read · Starting Up Miller's Law Jon Yablonski
7. The deeper, research backed treatment from the field's most trusted usability lab. It explains the actual mechanics of target... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Fitts's Law and Its Applications in UX Raluca Budiu
8. A curated map of the psychology that underpins these laws, with links to go deeper on each. Rather than one principle, it... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Psychology for UX: Study Guide Tanner Kohler
9. A clear, example rich walkthrough of Hick's Law with the history and the practical moves side by side. It shows how to figure... Interaction Design Foundation Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Hick's Law: Making the Choice Easier for Users Mads Soegaard
10. A hands on explainer of how size and distance shape whether a control feels easy or fiddly. It uses concrete UI examples,... Interaction Design Foundation Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Fitts's Law: The Importance of Size and Distance in UI Design Interaction Design Foundation
11. A clear Hick's Law primer from one of India's established design studios, so the framing sits close to home. It lays out four... Think Design (India) Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Understanding Hick's Law and Its Application in UX Design Stuti Mazumdar
12. Spool, who has studied usability since the 1970s, reframes testing from a pass-or-fail exam into a habit of regularly watching... Medium (Jared Spool) Essay · Starting Up A Fundamental Mind Shift for Usability Testing Jared Spool
13. A founder-framed walkthrough of running a lightweight usability test and why five users catch roughly 80 percent of issues. It... UXReactor Article · Starting Up Usability Testing: A Founder's Guide (test with 5 users) UXReactor
14. Written for Indian founders, it names the local trap of jumping straight to wireframes and dev without watching a single real... Vamos Digital Article · Starting Up UX Design vs UI Design: What Indian Founders Need to Know Before Building a Product Vamos Digital
15. Hulick pulls apart the first run experience of well known apps screen by screen, showing what each step costs and what it... UserOnboard Article · Starting Up User Onboarding Teardowns Samuel Hulick
16. A comic style teardown of Blinkist onboarding grounded in behavioral psychology, showing why each step helps or hurts. It gives... Growth.Design Article · Starting Up One Simple Psychology Framework To Improve Your Onboarding (Blinkist) Growth.Design
17. Duolingo lets people finish a full lesson before it ever asks them to create an account, and this study breaks down why that... Growth.Design Article · Starting Up Duolingo's User Retention: 8 Tactics Tested On 300 Million Users Growth.Design
18. Research backed rules for making forms feel effortless, which is where much of onboarding drop happens. It directly supports... Nielsen Norman Group Article · Starting Up Few Guesses, More Success: 4 Principles to Reduce Cognitive Load in Forms Huei-Hsin Wang
19. A structured guide to diagnosing and fixing onboarding from one of the most respected growth education teams. It helps you map... Reforge Article · Starting Up Optimize new user onboarding Reforge
20. A pointed case study in obvious labels over clever ones. A vague "Get Started" button reads as friendly but leaves people... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~6 min read · Starting Up "Get Started" Stops Users Aurora Harley and Kim Flaherty
21. Eye tracking evidence for how people actually scan a screen, which tells you where to put the things that matter. If your... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up F-Shaped Pattern of Reading on the Web: Misunderstood, But Still Relevant Kara Pernice
22. A former Facebook design VP walks through how to look at a screen and judge whether it works, from first impression to first... Julie Zhuo (The Year of the Looking Glass) Essay · ~12 min read · Starting Up How to Do a Product Critique Julie Zhuo
23. Norman's own short essay on the idea that decides whether a control looks usable: affordances and signifiers. It is the crisp,... Don Norman (jnd.org) Essay · ~10 min read · Starting Up Affordances and Design Don Norman
24. Concrete evidence for what originality in the wrong place actually costs. It shows how novel patterns confuse users and slow... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience Katie Sherwin

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