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
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.
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.
Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives
by Joel Spolsky (one of the guys behind this site)
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
Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell is pretty good.
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.
Regarding articles, try Boxes and Arrows
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).
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.
I read articles from http://ui-patterns.com/ and http://www.uxbooth.com/. Those have been helpful for me.
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!
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As a front-end developer, I would like to develop nice and good usability web applications. However, normally developers are good at coding. So, I would ask how to get started with learning some UI design knowledge? What's your recommended books or courses for a newbie to learn? Basically for graphic design, fonts and colors etc etc.
As a UI/UX developer myself, graphic design techniques are questions related to Photoshop, Illustrator, color theory, typography, etc. Usability is related to UI/UX, coding and web architecture. Graphic design and web usability are two very distinctive fields.
What is User Experience Design? - Wiki article on UX
User Experience is any aspect of a person's interaction with a given
IT system, including the interface, graphics, industrial design,
physical interaction, and the manual.
What is graphic Design? - Wiki article on Graphic Design
"Graphic design is the art of communication, stylizing, and
problem-solving through the use of type and image."
Resources #Nathan provided are great, I would also add this to your reading arsenal, education and inspiration:
Open University classes
University of Washington - Visualization
MIT - Drawings & Numbers
USQ - Multimedia
Berkeley - Computer Graphics
Sites & Inspirations
OnePageLove
Responsive.ly
A List Apart
Awwwards
Css Tricks
Tuts plus
Can I use
As with any other skill set, to way to get better is practice, practice, practice. I would just keep building projects as case studies and learn the skill sets as you venture through different types of web applications.
Best of luck on this journey.
Books are good, but to stay upfront and get aware of what is happening the latest and what tools and techniques are in, I suggest you to actively participate on webistes like
Smashing Magazine,
Sitepoint &
Web design Ledger
to name a few, but top quality resources. To know more about the books, you can refer to
Apress Books for front end development
for start to ninja resources.
Hope this helps.
Build on the shoulders of those who have gone before. To be a great developer, you have to know your stuff. In the same way, to be a good designer requires understanding of some basic foundational guidelines. Some of it may seem pretty simple and tedious, but understanding the proper principles of typography, color theory, grid systems and so on can help you a lot. A few resources to get you going are:
Universal Principles of Design
The Elements of Typographic Design by Robert Bringhurst
Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type by Kimberly Elam
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
Microinteractions: Designing with Details by Dan Saffer
That list should generate it's own follow-on books / websites reading list for you.
Ask questions. Find some designers you really like and ask questions. Try to understand why they made the decisions they did. Most people are pretty willing to talk about their own work. Asking questions helps you to understand why designers use (or don't use) certain design principles in their work.
Actually design (and seek out constructive criticism.) Like anything you do in life, reading and learning can only take you so far. At some point, you have to start practicing. Find a small circle / community of more senior designers who can review your designers and give you some brutal, but constructive criticism. Your stuff will suck at first. Everyone's work does. Designers spend hours upon hours honing their talents and skills. Don't get discouraged by it. Just like anything you can gain mastery in, it takes time. Having people in your life who can give constructive feedback is a huge help.
Have a look at WebAwwards never let me down yet... Great selection and new websites added every day
I've just signed up for the Google group entitled Test Driven Development but it's only had 3 posts in 2010 and seems to be littered with spam.
Does anyone know of a good TDD focussed place to ask those general perhaps 'subjective' questions which might not be welcomed on SO?
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/testdrivendevelopment/ - they are very active and always open to discussion.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/ is another good one. Obviously TDD is only one of the practices of extreme programming so topics won't be limited to strictly TDD.
http://groups.google.com/group/software_craftsmanship - Another good one. Again not strictly limited to TDD.
If you're looking for discussions about a particular testing framework most have their own user forums. Here's a list of frameworks for various languages.
There's an Agile Developer Skills Group that is fairly active. Obviously it has a larger focus than just TDD, but it might help:
http://groups.google.com/group/agile-developer-skills?pli=1
Before/On/After somo Dojo/Kata sessions
So you can both discuss it subjectively and do some practice
This might help : https://stackoverflow.com/
GUIs are one of the important areas in most of the software products. I would like to know whether there is something called GUI Standards that defines the best practices in GUI design, but in depth. As an example are there any definitions that contain the best size for a text box or the ratio between the width and hight of a Windows form. (Just to provide maximum ease to the user + best appearance)
While searching I found several articles: GUI Standards
But they seem to be some "Local" standards defined by some organization only for themselves. Do we have something more common/published than this?
I know there is a standard from Microsoft as well.. But it is just what they do. Not a practices list for best appearance\usability\user experience.
Look for platform-specific user interface design guides. Microsoft has one, as does Apple and even GNOME.
Things like this are quite "cultural", i.e. they change when you move between different operating systems and so on.
I don't think there is any GUI standard, but for sure there are some good GUI practices.
This article seems helpful
Principles of Good GUI Design
I found a similar SO question also
Best Practices & Principles for GUI design
Take a look at the User Experience Patterns (UX Patterns), by Infragistics. It's a nice source of inspiration.
I suggest this post : Best Practices & Principles for GUI design
Also, in google search, use "usability".
I also read a good book about it. But sorry, it is in French :-(
Use your users as a standard. What works best for them is what is best, so talk to them, show them prototypes and use their feedback as input to the final product.
Have a look at Jakob Nielsen's Website for a wealth of usability material.
Depends what you're doing. Nearly every platform has their own official and usually a few unofficial ones.
That's the beauty of standards if you
don't like it pick another one
. However GUI is not easy to standardise as there are multiple IO mechanisms - visual, non visual, one way, interactive etc.
No one standard could fit all - except perhaps and ISO or another standards body and that as we know will be obsolete before it's even completed a first draft.
On the other hand there are various psychologically based user experience techniques that are slowly becoming de rigeur standards.
Both Microsoft and Apple have had GUI standards for more than 20 years.
For instance expressed in the books "The Windows Interface. An Application Design Guide" (1987, ISBN 1-55615-439-9) and "Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface" (1987, ISBN 0-201-17753-6). This information is also online.
The Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines might be what you're looking for...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx
windows is originaly based on CUA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
although microsoft has gone bananas since Vista, one example is the exchanged order of Edit and View menu commands in the calculator.
There must be many online resources for good user interface design principles. I'd like to see an easily-browsed list, perhaps categorized by desktop vs. on-line (or maybe not; that might be too limiting).
Any examples out there?
The List (so far)
A List Apart
Designing Web Interfaces
Jakob Nielsen's useit.com
Quince
Smashing Magazine
Usability Post
Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Designing Web Interfaces
I honestly think that StackOverflow really has a well thought out UI. Access to most everything is intuitive and efficient.
I've already changed some of my own interfaces based on things I have seen here.
Quince by Infragistics has a pretty good selection.
A List Apart
also, Smashing Magazine is pretty good.
as is Usability Post
A List Apart provide articles about design and also how to make them standards compatible.
Don't miss Jakob Nielsen's useit.com website.
You might be looking for "design patterns," common ways we present and perform interactions, such as those discussed in Jenifer Tidwell's book, Designing Interfaces. Her book's site links to her original pattern library, Common Ground, as well, but the book is a good one to own.
Yahoo! has a Design Pattern Library, focused on web design patterns, and Quince was mentioned in a previous comment.
http://designingwebinterfaces.com/, the accompanying website to the homonym book has some good patterns.
Although I'm a programmer looking to explore social software patterns, I'm also interested in their psychological and sociological origins.
My proposed format is to limit each reply to ONE reading with a short summary of why it's important.
The idea is that we will then be able to see which particular readings are most important. Since community wiki posts don't count towards one's reputation, hopefully there won't be too many complaints.
I've read a few papers and a few books myself, so I'll get the conversation started...
Shirky: Community, Audiences, and Scale
A 2002 essay arguing that communities don't scale, since humans have a finite capacity for connections with other people, and that those connections are what make communities useful. I agree.
designing for the social web
Author Joshua Porter is a web designer so the writing has advice in how to design social web applications; however, there is plenty of psychological and sociological analysis here that leads up to the advice. You may also be interested in this NY Times article on ambient intimacy.
The Delicious Lesson
The Del.icio.us Lesson, from Bokardo, is that personal value precedes network value in social applications. In other words, you shouldn't expect your users to contribute meaningfully to the health of a group function. What you can and should do, is to assume that users will act in their own self-interest, and then try to learn from what they do. That derived information is what's useful to the group.
Anyway, that's what I take from it. There's also a bunch of talk about the merits of tagging in general, but the reason this reading is important is for the lesson outlined above.
The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat
The principle developers of Habitat, a "multi-user online environment" write about their experiences and lessons learned. Habitat was a virtual community that can be thought of as a very early precursor to Second Life. In the paper, the authors declare some guidelines for social software, some of which are widely accepted today. Some of the guidelines, such as the assumption that bandwidth will always be a scarce resource, were prescient. The authors spend a lot of time trying to say, I think, that complexity in social software should come from the users, not the programmers.
In another feat of foresight, the authors warn administrators of social software to try to "work within the system". I've seen a good number of social apps get a lot of negative attention when they censored a user's action for reasons that seemed unjust. Flickr and Digg come immediately to mind. The authors might have recommended that the moderators of flickr and digg attempt to discourage unwanted behavior without pulling the adminstrator card and wiping out user content.
Like the LambdaMOO paper, there's an implicit warning against assuming any sort of higher-mindedness from the users of your software. Assume that online identities will display every baser behavior that offline humans do. The authors remind us that real people are behind those avatars.
There's also an extensive bibliography at the end of this paper, although the listed material is by now quite dated.
Shirky: A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy
In 2003, Clay Shirky (shirky.com) gave a speech at The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference about social software, and this article is essentially a transcript. Borrowing from Experiences in Groups by W.R. Bion, he begins by talking about ways groups, online and offline tend to self-destruct.
This is a wide-ranging article in which Shirky explains many of the typical problems in social software design, lists assumptions that designers of such software should make, and outlines solutions to common pitfalls.
Overall, it's a fantastic read. If you're thinking about writing some new social software offering, I suggest you read it periodically to stay on track.