Resources

The Resources section contains a list of sites and texts recommended to the class.

Links

All relevant links are listed here. We may also use del.icio.us.

• "A History of the GUI"
• Tufte article from Salon

Recommended Books

These reference books focus on the principles and guidelines of good user interface design and examine treatments of page, content and navigation.

Designing the User Interface by Ben Shneiderman

An introduction to user-interface design in which the author discusses the principles and practices needed to design effective interaction. It contains chapters on the World Wide Web, information visualization and computer-supported co-operative work. Topics discussed included speech input/output, natural-language interaction, anthropomorphic design, virtual environments and agents. A bit dated.

Cutting Edge Web Design: The Next Generation by David Carson

Cutting Edge Web Design showcases designs that were once reserved only for print, as well as designs that have no print counterpart.

User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by Janice C. Redish

User and Task Analysis for Interface Design helps you design a great user interface by focusing on the most important step in the process -the first one. You learn to go out and observe your users at work, whether they are employees of your company or people in customer organizations. You learn to find out what your users really need, by going through a process of understanding what they are trying to accomplish. This book includes many examples of design successes and challenges for products of every kind.

Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

Standards are about building sophisticated, beautiful sites that will work as well tomorrow as they do today.

Elements of Web Design by Lynne Stiles (Contributor)

This book introduces traditional designers to the opportunities and pitfalls of Web design. Assuming readers understand traditional design issues but not the specific demands of the Web, this book includes chapters on every step of assembling pages—from pulling together a team with the appropriate skills, to choosing the right design formats, to creating contracts with clients to reflect the ever-changing nature of web pages.

Web Design Tools and Techniques, (2nd Edition) by Peter Kentie

Good web design books cover three things: pure HTML syntax, tips to attract surfers, and design issues. Best suited for new and intermediate designers, his guide shows how to create a storyboard, use site statistics for marketing purposes, and apply edgy design techniques without scaring off visitors, among other things. Advanced designers, too, will find plenty of food for thought.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Peter Morville

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web shows you how to blend aesthetics and mechanics for distinctive, cohesive web sites that work. Most books on web development concentrate on either the graphics or the technical issues of a site. This book focuses on the framework that holds the two together.

Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them by Jeff Johnson

In response to strong feedback from readers of GUI Bloopers calling for a book devoted exclusively to web design bloopers, Jeff Johnson calls attention to the most frequently occurring and annoying design bloopers from real web sites he has worked on or researched. Not just a critique of these bloopers and their sites, this book shows how to correct or avoid the blooper and gives a detailed analysis of each design problem. I taught GUI Bloopers a number of years ago and students thought it was not detailed or thoughtful enough.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

The bookt examines the effect of poor design and equipment failure on human behavior. Intended for a general audience, it covers user-centered design, the psychopathology of everyday things and the psychology of everyday actions. This text is considered a standard in the field.

Information Visualization: Perception for Design by Colin Ware

This is the first book to combine a strictly scientific approach to human perception with a practical concern for the rules governing the effective visual presentation of information. Surveying the research of leading psychologists and neurophysiologists, the author isolates key principles at work in vision and perception, and from them, derives specific, effective visualization techniques, suitable for a wide range of scenarios.

Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen

In this landmark design reference, the world's acknowledged authority on Web usability, Jakob Nielsen, shares with you the full weight of his wisdom and experience. From content and page design to designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities, Jakob Nielsen delivers complete direction on how to connect with any web user, in any situation.

The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design by Deborah J. Mayhew, Tim S. Kelly, Jakob Nielsen and Jonathan Grudin

Inside this book, a twenty-year expert presents the techniques of Usability Engineering as a series of product lifecycle tasks that result directly in easier-to-learn, easier-to-use software. You'll learn to perform a complete requirements analysis and then incorporate the resulting goals and constraints in a highly structured, iterative design and development process. Also covered are organizational issues related to the implementation of Usability Engineering, including cost justification, project planning, and organizational structures.

Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency by Jakob Nielsen

In these contributed chapters, you'll find details on many methods for seeking and enforcing consistency, along with bottom-line analyses of its benefits and some warnings about its possible dangers. Most of what you'll learn applies equally to hardware and software development, and all of it holds real benefits for both your organization and your users.

Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context by Jim Foley

Offering a structured approach to web usability, Shaping Web Usability describes several contexts in which each site must be viewed, from the genre to which it belongs to the individual page. The book then provides a concrete methodology for designing a site effectively for the convenience, practicality, and pleasure of its users.

Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work by Scott Wood

This book tells you how to design usable web sites in a systematic process applicable to almost any business need. You get practical advice on managing the project and incorporating usability principles from the project's inception. The book is written for web designers and web project managers seeking a balance between usability goals and business concerns.

User-Centered Website Development: A Human-Computer Interaction Approach by Jared M. Spool

This text stresses HCI principles, not just Web implementation techniques. The book provides a working knowledge of web design, aimed at creating web pages and sites that are attractive and user-friendly, while allowing students to become familiar with the concepts and terminology of Web design as a basis for further study.