Recommended Other Websites
Visit Tomalak's Realm daily and you will have an overview of
everything good to read on the Web that day.
See the Usable Web site for the
ultimate comprehensive collection of useful links.
Also see Wilson's
Web Marketing Info Center for many links related to business-enhancing
design.
Home Page Spotlights
I don't write a regular weblog (no time), but I often spotlight sites or articles that are worth reading. Usually with commentary that ran on the useit.com home page for a few days.
Regular Columns
- Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini's monthly AskTog column: mostly about user
interfaces for Web applications. Extremely well written.
- Scott Berkum's UIweb. The author was lead designer and usability engineer for several versions of Internet Explorer.
- The Poynter Institute's E-Media Tidbits provides regular commentary with links to issues relating to online content.
About.com (originally known under the more interesting name The Mining
Company) has special sections with weekly columns
and "finds" from across the Web.
Includes: Web design,
online advertising (I don't
believe Web ads work but they are interesting to read about),
graphic design,
the "Internet industry," and HTML/XML.
Some Good Sites
I have given up posting a full list of good sites. Instead, please see the directory sites mentioned above since they are being maintained by people who focus on that job. Here are a few sites I like.
"Web pages that
suck" is a series of critiques of poor Web design. The examples are
wonderful(ly bad) and I find myself in agreement with the author's analysis
about 95 percent of the time. Probably the highest scoring other Web site
in terms of agreeing with me. (This site has proven so popular that an
extended version has been published on dead
trees.)
The
"Bad Designs" site
presents many good design lessons illustrated with everyday things. The Interface Hall of Shame
contains good analyses of many poorly chosen GUI elements.
Another good collection of bad designs is "Design Not Found". This one focuses on websites and their lack of support for edge cases in the interaction (e.g., how to handle error states).
Microsoft
- Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN)'s special interest area on
user
interfaces, with special links to their UI guidelines (which
must be followed if you develop for Windows) and a regular
human factors column
- Guidelines for Web design from Microsoft's
usability research
- Microsoft's usability lab
Other UI Hotlists
- The HCI List lists most user interface sites of interest.
- Vertical Research
(a consulting company) has a long list of recommended user interface links.
- The HCI Bibliography has a
database of more than 15,000 references to printed publications about
human-computer interaction (including abstracts; about 1,000 papers have
links to online versions). The Bibliography project also maintains a list
of the most prolific
authors in the user interface field.