RE: Human-computer interaction and interface design

[Andy Becraft <andy -at- trados -dot- com>]

Karen Black wants to know if there are any good web sites or books out there
on human factors and UI design.

Karen, doing a search for "usability," "interface design," or "human
factors" on Amazon returns hundreds of relevant results. Specifically, I've
found Jakob Nielsen's books worth reading (particularly _Designing Web
Usability_), and I've also gotten a copy of Microsoft's _Windows User
Experience_ (also available electronically on MSDN.com).

As far as web pages are concerned, here are some that I have found very
useful:

Bruce Tognazzini's home page:
http://www.asktog.com/

Jakob Nielsen's home page:
http://www.useit.com/

Bad Human Factors Designs (a compendium of poor designs):
http://www.baddesigns.com/

"When Web pages don't work"  (an interesting article by an IBM UI design
guru):
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/web-work.html

IBM's "Web Design Guidelines" home page:
http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/572

The Interface Hall of Shame:
http://www.iarchitect.com/shame.htm

Usable Web (a compendium of links about web usability):
http://usableweb.com/

User Interface Engineering (already mentioned, but worth mentioning twice):
http://world.std.com/~uieweb/


The tech comm connection to all this? Most of the books and the web sites I
mentioned above have these two things to say about usability and interface
design as they relate to documentation:

1. Documentation can have as many usability problems as whatever the user
guides and help are documenting.
2. Documenting around poor design is no substitute for developing a usable
product.

Best regards,

-Andy

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