What are the best resources for designing user interfaces?

Question

Specifically, what are some GUI resources on the web based on case studies that suggest best practices on a scientific basis rather than a subjective one?

Answer 1

Check out Usability Inspection Methods by Nielsen and Mack. It's a very academic tome that addresses various objective means for evaluating interfaces.

Nielsen's own website is the subject of a lot of polarizing debate, given how ugly it is, but it also has a bunch of good information and research available.

Answer 2

Read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug if you haven't already... he has been dealing with UI and usability for a long time, and what he says is pretty insightful.

Answer 3

the only thing that comes to mind is o'reilly's mind hacks. It talks about how the mind works and perception, which sounds like what you are looking for.

Answer 4

http://hcid.soi.city.ac.uk/index.html

Unfortunately their findings are all packed in academic research papers.

I don't know how much Nielsen relies on research for his advice. He's a guru, he could say you should plaster your page with red text paragraphs on blue blackground and GeoCities "under constriction" logos and people would probably buy into it :)

Answer 5

Specifically on form design, here's a study on eye movement and label placement: http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000107.php

Which is meant to give some more weight to the principles of form design discussed here: http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/web_forms.html

Answer 6

If you are feeling somewhat academic and high-level about it all, and have finished off some of the others suggested (like "Don't Make Me Think" as @Mike Stone posted), then maybe Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander might be of interest.

Answer 7

There are plenty of scientific papers that are in the ACM Digital library which are based on "scientific" results. Unfortunately ACM Digital library is not open to public; you may have access to it through a university or local library (or even your employer, if any). They also publish an interactions magazine which presents new studies in the field.

Answer 8

I'll add one that I know of that hasn't been mentioned yet: Boxes and Arrows

Answer 9

Check this link out: http://www.iqcontent.com/blog/2007/05/a-really-simple-metric-for-measuring-user-interfaces/

Here is a simple pre-launch check you should do on all your web applications. It only takes about 5 seconds and one screeshot

Q: “What percentage of your interface contains stuff that your customers
    want to see?”

1. 10%
2. 25%
3. 100%

If you answer a, or b then you might do well, but you’ll probably get blown out of the water once someone decides to enter the market with option c.

then it compares usability in google mail and yahoo mail.

useit.com was already posted, but I recommend especially this page: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html

"Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford. "

Answer 10

It's very difficult to get scientific on many usability questions.

For instance, people will often report much better satisfaction using a website that is more difficult to use simply because it's prettier or more fun. If you measure usability solely in terms of what can be measured, like efficiency in executing a given task like a Jakob Nielsen would, then you will run into a problem.

Usability should really be about how much people will use and enjoy using a product. Efficiency in doing things is often only a portion of this kind of usability.

Here's a great Spolsky quote:

"Every time I read Jakob Nielsen," I wrote in 2000, "I get this feeling that he really doesn't appreciate that usability is not the most important thing on earth. Sure, usability is important (I wrote a whole book about it). But it is simply not everyone's number one priority, nor should it be. You get the feeling that if Mr. Nielsen designed a singles bar, it would be well lit, clean, with giant menus printed in Arial 14 point, and you'd never have to wait to get a drink. But nobody would go there; they would all be at Coyote Ugly Saloon pouring beer on each other."

from http://www.joelonsoftware.com/design/1stDraft/02.html

Answer 11

And I'd recommend The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin, who worked on many of the early Apple interfaces:

http://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-Designing-Interactive/dp/0201379376

Answer 12

You may also want to have a look at:

http://www.openusability.org/

Answer 13

I don't know how "scientific" these resources are or how they would be considered in terms of "case studies", but these resources could be considered standards and/or best practices for Windows, Apple and Web Accessibility for GUI interactions and design. The Internet obviously is a beast all its own in Usability and User Experience, especially if you branch into Rich Internet Applications (AJAX, Flash, Silverlight, Java Applets) for good practices in designing UIs.

Before I go into the UI Guidelines list, this may be even more useful. Design like Office 2007, use the Ribbon ... http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-design.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines

Windows Vista http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa511258.aspx

Apple http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/index.html

W3C Accessibility http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Answer 14

There are several places that contain useful research based evidence for best practices of UI design. The usability.gov website has the Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines

Jarod Spool has a collection of articles on his User Interface Engineering website and the Designer's Guide to Web Applications written by Hagan Rivers is excellent:

One of the best resources for general User Experience resources, can be found on Dey Alexander's website.

Answer 15

I always look at existing web sites/apps on Amazon.com and Yahoo.com. They have already figured out a lot of the ways to make things easy for users.

Answer 16

Patterns in Interaction Design is an excellent source of proven user interface design patterns.

Answer 17

I just found this post that lists 20 Websites that should help with user interface design.

Answer 18

This website also offers a variety of fairly high (informational) quality links on the science of graphic design.

Answer 19

If you are developing under Microsoft Windows, the UX Guide is the ultimate guideline for designing user interfaces. It covers all types of standard controls, including new Vista paradigms. It's available as a PDF:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx

Answer 20

The Yahoo! Design Pattern Library is the result of Yahoo!'s research on interaction patterns for pretty much anything: transitions, autocomplete, breadcrumbs, drag and drop, pagination, tabs, grids, ratings, reputation etc.