25 Excellent Usability/UX Articles and Resources

Post from March 30, 2007 (↻ December 29, 2020), filed under Web Development and Art and Design (feed).

This post is partially outdated.

Today I thought I’d share some of the most valuable usability and user experience articles and resources I know, in a somewhat wild mix. Since there’s presumably enough to read and talk about later, please welcome a few great articles and research papers you hopefully enjoy as much as I do:

• Apple: User Experience Guides
• Calabria: An Introduction to Personas and How to Create Them
• Cameron: Why People Don’t Read Online and What to Do About It
• Crescimanno: Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist
• Garrett: The Elements of User Experience (PDF, 17 KB)
• Hadley: Clean, Cutting-Edge UI Design Cuts McAfee’s Support Calls by 90%
• Hawdale: The Vision of Good User Experience (PDF, 1,115 KB)
• Knemeyer: Completely Rethinking the Web
• Merholz: The Lure of the Single Click
• Merholz: User Experience Is a Quality, Not a Discipline
• Morville: User Experience Design
• Perfetti: Reassuring Users with Inukshuk Content
• Tullis et al.: A Study of Website Navigation Methods
• Usability.gov: Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines (PDF, 161,101 KB)
• UsabilityNet: International Standards for HCI and Usability
• Wroblewski: The Sweet Spot for Buying
• W3C WAI: Notes on User Centered Design Process (UCD)
• WebSiteOptimization.com: Clickstream Study Reveals Dynamic Web

In case you miss people, organizations, or other things concerning the above topics, here are a few more excellent sites where you’ll find interesting material and good advice:

• Cooper, Alan
• Human Factors International
• Hurst, Mark
• Knemeyer, Dirk
• Nielsen, Jakob
• Norman, Donald
• Tognazzini, Bruce
• User Interface Engineering
• UXmatters

No matter that these are 27 resources, what are you favorites of both these and your own bookmarks?

About Me

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. Thank you!

Comments (Closed)

1. On April 9, 2007, 22:11 CEST, Austin Govella said:

   Jens,

   That’s an awesome list.

   There are two articles I keep close:

   “Information Interaction Design: A unified field theory of design” by
   Nathan Shedroff:
   * http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/

   “All watched over by machines of loving grace: Some ethical guidelines
   for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings” by Adam
   Greenfield (Boxes and Arrows)
   * http://tinyurl.com/nw3mx

   Not sure these belong on your list. They’re just good. Curious to hear
   about other personal touchstones.

2. On December 2, 2008, 15:15 CET, Richard Morton said:

   Very useful list, and I particularly like Jesse James Garret’s PDF in your list. Although it is quite old now it still covers the user experience fundamentals very well.

3. On February 16, 2009, 21:50 CET, Jens Oliver Meiert said:

   Late addition: If this was helpful, take a look at my Delicious bookmarks tagged usability/ux and temporary, too.