Good articles on usability?

Question

I'm looking to find any articles/books on usability. I'd like to get a handle on best practices when designing a UI, this can be anything from which user controls are more intuitive to a new user, to how to phrase text that is displayed to the user to avoid confusing dialogs. I mainly do Windows desktop applications, but most usability standards, I assume, would stand true regardless of the platform.

As an example, here's an MSDN article about the Windows User Experience Guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx

Answer 1

Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell is pretty good.

Answer 2

Well, a long-standing favorite specifically for user interface design is Alan Cooper's About Face. It should touch most important topics when designing Windows desktop applications.

Then there are also various UX patterns which are well-presented in Quince (needs Silverlight).

Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface is also rather good, but very radical in his ideas. Still, this book points out many fallacies in modern UI design. If you need to stick to the WIMP world, then following his suggestions might be a little hard as he tends to suggest to overthrow everything we're used to. But well-written and good for provoking thoughts, even if you don't follow all his advice.

As for books/articles on usability in general or on slightly different topics:

• Jakob Nielsen's website useit.com. While not particularly fancy-designed it is a trove of thoughts and advice on usability in general.
• Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. Web usability, but also a very good read.
• Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. Usability in general and has many pointers on how to think about usability without going into specific technologies. It's applicable to desktop application usability anyway, though.

Answer 3

Try reading this book: Don't Make Me Think. While it's focused on web usability it is applicable to all facets of UI design.

Answer 4

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman is a standard book on general usability considerations that can be applied to just about everything in day-to-day life. It's not specifically about software, but it's worth it to read it.

Universal Principles of Design is a recommended textbook for my university's Engineering Methods of Software Usability course. Myself, and others who have taken this course, have found this book to be more useful than the required textbook. There appears to be an updated version, called Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design, but I can't speak about that one.

Answer 5

Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives

by Joel Spolsky (one of the guys behind this site)

Answer 6

Regarding articles, try Boxes and Arrows

Answer 7

Designing Visual Interfaces by Mullet and Sano provides a great foundation for different layout-related issues. Not a book on usability per se but still relevant, I'd say.

As for web resources, try:

• useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website
• Usable Web
• A List Apart on usability

For book inspiration, see Suggested Readings in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), User Interface (UI) Development, & Human Factors (HF) (and all the great answers in this thread).

Answer 8

when designing UI, please do consider accessibility as well. it's mostly relevant for web sites, but could also be applicable for rich client (desktop apps). so, these links has a lot of info on the subject, though it's not pure usability info.

a good resource on usability and accessibility: Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web

you might find this check list useful: Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

and also this tool that will check your web site accessibility: web aim

Answer 9

My favorite usability blog contains very well-constructed, insightful and thoughtful posts, by David Hamill.

You can find his blog at goodusability.co.uk

Enjoy.

Answer 10

I read articles from http://ui-patterns.com/ and http://www.uxbooth.com/. Those have been helpful for me.

Answer 11

I would like to second uxbooth.com - we recently had an article published there which might be what you are looking for - check it out at http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/usability-testing-dont-guess-test/

usefulusability.com

is another good site, they regularly have good articles up there.

Oh, and another article we had published recently:

www.1stwebdesigner.com/development/usability-ux-pitfalls-howto-avoid/

I think this one provides some pretty good examples of issues that frequently pop up, and how to avoid them.

And if you are looking to run a simple usability test, what not check us out at IntuitionHQ.com

Good luck!