Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. A short, clear video on why showing options beats making people remember them, with interface examples. If you prefer watching... Nielsen Norman Group Video · ~4 min video · Starting Up Recognition vs. Recall in User Interfaces Raluca Budiu
9. Baxley led design at Apple and Pinterest, and here he talks about craft and the obligation to reduce the friction people feel... Lenny's Podcast (Bob Baxley) Podcast · ~90 min episode · Starting Up 35 Years of Product Design Wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and Beyond Lenny Rachitsky and Bob Baxley
10. A ready to use script for running your own usability test, from Krug's book. You do not have to invent how to phrase tasks or... Steve Krug (sensible.com) Template · PDF, a few pages · Starting Up Usability Test Script (from Rocket Surgery Made Easy) Steve Krug
11. 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
12. This separates internal consistency (within your product) from external consistency (matching the wider world of apps your... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Maintain Consistency and Adhere to Standards (Usability Heuristic #4) Nielsen Norman Group
13. This names the exact tension in your question and gives a rule for when innovation is worth its learning cost. Watch it to... Nielsen Norman Group Video · 5 min · Starting Up Consistency vs. Innovation in UX Design Raluca Budiu
14. A catalogue of common interface patterns (registration, pricing tables, search, empty states, and more) with several real... UI-Patterns.com Tool · reference library · Starting Up UI-Patterns.com UI-Patterns.com
15. Argues for stripping the interface down to essentials, which pairs neatly with copying conventions: keep the common parts quiet... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Aesthetic and Minimalist Design (Usability Heuristic #8) Therese Fessenden
16. Alex Russell, a Chrome engineer, puts hard numbers on what most of the world's phones can actually do, and the gap between them... Infrequently Noted (Alex Russell) Essay · Long read · Starting Up The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024 Alex Russell
17. Every kilobyte of JavaScript costs far more on a cheap phone than on your machine, because the phone has to download it and... Addy Osmani (Dev Channel, Medium) Article · 20 min read · Starting Up The Cost Of JavaScript Addy Osmani
18. A small download is the first thing a data conscious user notices, and the official guide is the practical how to: app bundles,... Android Developers Article · Reference · Starting Up Reduce your app size Android Developers
19. This is the developer side of the entry level phone: an OS tuned for 4GB RAM and under, with guidance on optimizing your app to... Android Developers Article · Guide hub · Starting Up Android (Go edition) and Build for Billions Android Developers
20. Video · 40 min · Starting Up Building for Your Next Billion Users (Google I/O 2017) Google
21. Facebook made its engineers spend an hour every Tuesday on a simulated 2G connection so they would feel what most of their... Engineering at Meta Article · Short read · Starting Up Building for emerging markets: the story behind 2G Tuesdays Meta Engineering
22. Instead of shipping the same heavy page to everyone, you can detect the connection and serve lighter images or defer non... web.dev (Google) Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Adaptive serving based on network quality Google Chrome team
23. A focused, code first companion on reading the user's connection (and even their data saver preference) and adjusting what you... AddyOsmani.com Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Adaptive Serving using JavaScript and the Network Information API Addy Osmani
24. A conversational episode with a Google advocate on low bandwidth design and data cost, good for absorbing the mindset while... Designer vs Developer (Google) Podcast · 30 min · Starting Up Sam Dutton on designing for the next billion users Google

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