[Ask HN: Best tips and resources for a software eng learning product design? (link below) provoked a bit of untempered passion (is there any other kind of passion?]
1. Nobody gives a shit what you like. The personal preferences of the designer are the least useful driver of design. This isn't to discount the designer's aesthetic judgement, but good design comes from applying that judgement to the appropriate context.
2. If you look at something successful and think it's shit, the most likely reason is you don't understand it. Jira sucks? How many weeks have you spent here?
https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides
And yes, weeks because Jira is a tool of your trade and you should be an expert. And that requires understanding who it is designed for; are you the buyer? Are you even the user in a meaningful sense? Or is Jira designed to be used by organizations?
3. The Design of Everyday Things is a great book and will take your design understanding from near zero to some value clearly not near zero. But it won't give you training and it won't give you experience.
4. More importantly, it won't give you the habit of grinding on a design for the months or years it takes to polish someone else's turds to a mirror finish. The only way to get good at design is by designing.
5. Serious design work doesn't feel like you imagine it feels. Serious design work feels like hard work. You might enjoy the hard work, but it is still hard work.
6. There is no silver bullet. Forget about tips and tricks. Do the work.
7. Efficiency is what design produces. Inefficiency is how that happens.
Good luck.
Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425693