User Interface Design
User interface design (UID) creates an effective communication medium between a human and a computer. Following a set of interface design principles, design identifies interface objects and actions and then creates a screen layout that forms the basis for an user interface prototype. The following resource categories are considered:
User Interface Design (UID)
Usability
Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Design
Books
User Interface Design (UID)
User Interface Design (UID) Concepts
An indepth paper developed by Common Front Group at Cornell.
User Interface Design (UID) Principles
An indepth paper that defines 14 key principles for user interface design. Recommended.
Interaction-Design Encyclopedia
An open-content, peer-reviewed Encyclopedia covering Interaction Design and related fields.
UID Principles
A detailed paper that discusses a number of important UID principles.
UID Resources
A collection of pointers to user interface design (UID) and usability information.
User Interface Toolkits - 1
A comprehensive listing of UI toolkits. However, the site is no longer updated.
User Interface Toolkits - 2
A comprehensive catalog of free GUI Toolkits including platform support and contact information.
Task-Centered UID
A book length treatment by Clayton lewis and John Reiman.
Analysis and Design for User Interfaces
An indepth strategy that defines each step in the UI analysis process. Also contains many useful tips and 'design notes.'
UID Bibliography
A collection of print and network-accessible books on UID.
Usability
Ten Usability Heuristics
Jacob Nielsen describes 10 guidelines that improve usability.
Ergonomic Guidelines
Eleven guidelines for designing more usable interfaces.
Usability Research
A wide array of usability information provided by Microsoft.
Ease of Use
An excellent source of GUI design guidelines, methods, and references prepared by IBM.
21st Century UI Issues
A paper that discusses key interface technologies for the 21st century.
The Usability Methods Toolbox
A comprehensive collection of information on usability methods, including inspections, testing, and prototyping. Recommended.
Guidelines for the Apple Aqua Interface
Insight into the most advanced user interface available for PCs.
Human Computer Interface (HCI) Design
HCI Resources: Guidelines, Style Guides, Standards - 1
HCI Resources: Guidelines, Style Guides, Standards - 2
Worthwhile collections of pointers to HCI information.
HCI Resources
Human-computer interaction resources on the net are list by topic.
HCI Design Patterns
Introduces a pattern language for HCI Designs
HCI Resources: WWW/Internet Resources
A worthwhile set of HCI links.
GUI Checklist - 1
A detailed checklist (46 questions) for GUI is presented.
GUI Checklist - 2
Can be downloaded from this site.
Books 
Although his book is not specifically about human/computer interfaces, much of what Donald Norman (The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, 2002) has to say about the psychology of effective design applies to the user interface. It is recommended reading for anyone who is serious about doing high-quality interface design.
Graphical user interfaces are ubiquitous in the modern world of computing. Whether it an ATM, a mobile phone, a PDA, a Web site, or a business application, the user interface provides a window into the software. It is for this reason that books addressed interface design abound. Galitz (The Essential Guide to User Interface Design, Wiley, 2002)
Cooper (About Face 2.0: The Essentials of User Interface Design, IDG Books, 2003), Beyer and Holtzblatt (Contextual Design: A Customer Centered Approach to Systems Design, Morgan-Kaufmann, 2002), Raskin (The Humane Interface, Addison-Wesley, 2000), Constantine and Lockwood (Software for Use, ACM Press, 1999), Mayhew (The Usability Engineering Lifecycle, Morgan-Kaufmann, 1999) all discuss usability, user interface concepts, principles, and design techniques and contain many useful examples.
Older books by Donnelly (In Your Face Too!: The Best of Interactive Interface Design, Rockport Publications, 2000); Fowler, Stanwick, and Smith (GUI Design Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998); Weinschenk and her colleagues (GUI Design Essentials, Wiley, 1997); and Mullet and Sano (Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques, PrenticeHall, 1995) have written treatments that provide additional design guidelines and principles as well as suggestions for interface requirements elicitation, design modeling, implementation, and testing.
Johnson (GUI Bloopers: Don’ts and Do’s for Software Developers and Web Designers, Morgan-Kaufmann, 2000) provides useful guidance for those that learn more effectively by examining counter-examples. An enjoyable book by Cooper (The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Sams Publishing, 1999) discusses why high tech products drive us crazy how to design ones that don’t.
Task analysis and modeling are pivotal interface design activities. Hackos and Redish (User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, Wiley, 1998) have written a book dedicated to these subjects and provide a detailed method for approaching task analysis. Wood (User Interface Design: Bridging the Gap from User Requirements to Design, CRC Press, 1997) considers the analysis activity for interfaces and the transition to design tasks. One of the first books to present the subject of scenarios in user-interface design has been edited by Carroll (Scenario-Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System Development, Wiley, 1995). A formal method for design of user interfaces, based on state-based behavior modeling has been developed by Horrocks (Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts, Addison-Wesley, 1998).
The evaluation activity focuses on usability. Books by Rubin (Handbook of Usability Testing, Wiley, 1994) and Nielson (Usability Inspection Methods, Wiley, 1994) address the topic in considerable detail.
In a unique book that may be of considerable interest to product designers, Murphy (Front Panel: Designing Software for Embedded User Interfaces, R&D Books, 1998) provides detailed guidance for the design of interfaces for embedded systems and addresses safety hazards inherent in controls, handling heavy machinery, and interfaces for medical or transport systems. Interface design for embedded products is also discussed by Garrett (Advanced Instrumentation and Computer I/O Design: Real-Time System Computer Interface Engineering, IEEE, 1994).
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