Here is a collection of useful guidelines, books, and articles on User-Centered Design. If you know of any resources you'd like to see added to the list, please contact jvine@stanford.edu.
Guidelines
Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines (usability.gov)
These guidelines are weighted by relative importance and the strength of supporting evidence. They are grouped into PDF chapters for download, and are also available as a printed book (see Books list). Also on this site:
- Guidelines Sorting Tool - lists the individual guidelines and allows you to sort them by weight to help prioritize your design efforts.
- Writing for the Web - guidelines for writing clearly and visually for online reading.
- Usability Methods - information about a wide range of user-centered design methods, organized to help you select the best method for your situation.
10 Usability Heuristics (Jakob Neilsen)
- Yale University Library's Usability and Assessment Advisory Group adapted Neilsen's Heuristics for library web interfaces, and published the adapted guidelines with examples (Word document).
First Principles of Interaction Design (Bruce Tognazzini)
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Neilsen).
This list has been revised several times as the web has evolved - the current list includes the following (see the article for more info about each one):
- Bad search
- PDF files for online reading
- Not changing the color of visited links
- Non-scannable text
- Fixed font size
- Page titles with low search engine visibility
- Anything that looks like an advertisement
- Violating design conventions
- Opening new browser windows
- Not answering user's questions
Library Terms That Users Understand (John Kupersmith, reference librarian at UC Berkeley)
Clearinghouse of usability research, best practices, and testing methods related to library terminology.
Books
Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Berkeley, Calif: New Riders Pub, 2006.
- First edition is in Socrates
- Read a chapter online at Steve's website: How we really use the Web
United States. Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 2006.
- Available in Socrates
- All chapters available online in PDF form
Davidsen, Susanna, and Everyl Yankee. Web Site Design with the Patron in Mind: A Step-by-Step Guide for Libraries. Chicago: American Library Association, 2004.
- Chapter online in Google Book Search: Tasks - Understanding What Patrons Want to Do.
Articles
Some notable email- or web-based newsletters on topics in web design and usability. Sign up for the newsletters, or scan the archives for topics relevant to your situation.
- alertbox (Jakob Neilsen, of Neilsen Norman Group)
- asktog (Bruce Tognazzini, also of Neilsen Norman Group)
- UIEtips (Jared Spool, of User Interface Engineering)
- A List Apart has articles from a variety of authors on User Science topics: