Handy Resources for Those Who Like to Doodle

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This post is an extract of message which I posted on Sourcebits’ internal Basecamp a while ago. It serves as our small library of wisdom, which each designer can access whenever they want and hopefully find answers to unknowns we stumble upon every once in a while. It has been helpful for us and we decided to share it with the world. Hoping that you don’t know some of the items and they will help you build better designs.

1. Apple Human Interface Guidelines

This is the number one resource for any designer – be it UI designer, web designer or even print designer. This document is a fantastic study on human behaviors when interacting with machines. Tons of VERY useful information. You should know it by heart!

2009-08-20 Version (Snow Leopard), Online
2006-10-03 Version (Tiger), PDF — This version contains UI metrics
1995 Version (OS 9), PDF (this one is quite funny, for reference)

2. Apple iPhone Human Interface Guidelines

Same as above but focused on this small, ugly phone from Apple.

Go to website or Download PDF

3. Android User Interface Guidelines

This document can serve two purposes: 1) it can teach you how to make proper UIs for Android and 2) when compared against Apple’s documents, it can show many extremely interesting similarities and differences in both approaches.

Go to website

4. First Principles of Interaction Design

A webpage with very precious information about how to design interactivity: behaviors, actions, feedback, characteristics and Fitts’ Law.

Go to website

5. Vision and Reality of Hypertext and Graphical User Interfaces

More about Fitts’ Law! This is an absolutely amazing thesis about human-machine interaction written by Matthias Müller-Prove from Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg. Pay attention to chapters 3 and 4. And learn Fitts’ Law by heart, it has huge implications in any kind of UI design.

Go to website

6. Information Design Patterns

Absolutely fantastic website about how to visually present various types of information. A must read!

Go to website

7. 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs

Nice article on Smashing Magazine. A few useful tips on general UI design and web design.

Go to website

8. useit.com

This is a treasure. Tons of fantastic articles about usability. A gem! Teaches you what NOT to do when you’re designing.

Go to website

9. Eyetrack III

How does the human eye perceive information? A page about psychology of perception, cognition directions, colors et caetera. Helps you understand how to build more effective, sensible and easy-to-use designs.

Go to website

10. Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design

• Minimize the number of text fields in your interfaces down to the absolute minimum necessary.
• Minimize the number of click/keystrokes/gestures necessary to accomplish actions in your interface.
• Make your interface as responsive as possible – minimize the latency of each and every action a user might take in your interface.

Go to website

11. Good design in ten commandments

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design helps a product to be understood

Go to website

12. What is usability?

Usability is defined by five quality components:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Go to website

13. How people really use the iPhone?

We all love philosophy, theories, discussions, assumptions and decisions based on our expertise. So wrong! Lukas Mathis from ignorethecode stresses the importance of usability tests and I tend to agree. There’s nothing worse than a Mister I-Know-It-All Designer who claims that he’s got all user experience patterns in his small finger. In fact I think the more designer admits that he can make a mistake, the better he is. Consciousness of limits in this job is crucial because our work is used by millions of very different people. And it is absolutely impossible for a single person to objectify a design. Hence usability tests! Here is one quite interesting, it can serve as an example on how to perform such tests.

Go to website

This list keeps growing as I roam through the web and find knowledge which helps me understand what is user interface design and how to approach it. Expect this post to be updated and feel free to add resources which you find useful — let’s share the wealth!