Good user interface design

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Someone asked about user interface (UI) design courses so I replied that the following will give you a good understanding of UI design:

  1. Don’t Make Me Think. Short, direct.
  2. The Design of Everyday Things. Classic book on design in general.
  3. Designing Interfaces, 3rd Edition. Jenifer worked at Google in the good old days. Includes a coherent set of principles.
  4. Nielsen Norman Group Interaction Design: 3-Day Course. Jacob Nielsen still the boss of usability.
  5. Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Apple’s interfaces suffered after Jobs left, but is getting better again.
  6. A Dao of Web Design. Short philosophical thoughts about web design that can be applied to other types, too.
  7. Usability Testing. Use your own interface and observer others using your interface to find and fix problems.
  8. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design. On to-read list.
  9. Clear writing is good interface design.

It’s important to practice, not just read. The term is “dogfooding”.

Finally, probably first of all, it’s worth thinking about whether your user interface is harmful to the people using it, and changing if so.

Publishing this here gives me an easy place to keep this good UI design resources list updated, and a link to send to people that ask the same question about good user interface design.


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