Usability and User Experience Resources
Usability Bookshelf

The Usability Bookshelf was originally compiled and annotated by Chauncey Wilson. Reviews submitted by others are acknowledged in the citations. The bookshelf is organized by author's name.

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Recommended Books in Usabilty and User Experience

If you are just starting out in usability or interface design, or are building a library, this list of books was recommended by an unscientific poll of SIG members and others in the profession, and updated by listening in on book recommendations in a variety of conversations. Which ones should you start with? As they say in the usability biz, "it depends."  Enjoy.

Usability Testing 

Barnum, C. Usability Testing and Research. Longman, New York, 2002. ISBN: 0-205-31519-4

Dumas, J. and Redish, J. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, Revised Edition, Intellect, 1999. ISBN: 1-84150-020-8.

Nielsen, J. Usability Engineering. Academic Press: Boston, MA, 1993. Amazon

Rubin, J. Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. Wiley: New York, NY, 1994. Amazon

Snyder, C., Paper Prototyping: Fast and Simple Techniques for Designing and Refining the User Interface, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 2003.

Inspiration and Business Support 

Bias, R. G. and Mayhew, D. J. (Eds.) Cost-Justifying Usability. Academic Press: Boston, MA, 1994. Amazon

Cooper, A. and Saffo, P., The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity, Sams: Carmel, IN, 1999

Donoghue, K., Built for Use: Driving Profitability Through the User Experience, McGraw Hill: NY, 2002

Landauer, T. K. The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1995. Amazon

Norman, D. The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday: New York, NY, 1990. Amazon

User Centered Design Process

Mayhew, D. J., The Usability Engineering Life Cycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 1999

Preece, J., Rogers, Y., and Sharp, H., Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, NY: John Wiley & Sons 2002,.

Rosson, M.B. and Carroll, J.M. Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 2002,.

Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe, M., & Minocha, S. User interface design and evaluation. Morgan Kaufmann: Amsterdam, 2005

Vredenburg, K, Isensee, S., and Righi, C.  User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002..

User and Task Analysis

Hackos, J. T. and Redish, J. C. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. Wiley: New York, 1998.  Amazon

Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K. Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 1998. Amazon

Kuniavsky, M. Observing the user experience: A practitioner's guide to user research. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 2003

Wixon, D. and Ramey, J. (Eds.), Field Methods Casebook for Software Design, John Wiley & Sons: NY, 1996.

Wood, L. (Ed.), User Interface Design: Bridging the Gap from User Requirements to Design, CRC Press: Boca Raton, 1998.

 

Web Design and Information Architecture

Brinck, T., Gergle, D., and Wood, S. D., Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites That Work, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 2002.

Farkas, D. and Farkas, J., Principles of Web Design, Longman: NY,  2002

Garrett, J. J., The Elements of User Experience,  New Riders: Indianapolis, 2002.

Johnson, J., Web Bloopers, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 2002.

Krug, S., Don't Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Second Edition), New Riders Press: Berkeley, 2005

Lynch, P. and Horton, S., Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, Yale University Press:New Haven, CT, 1999 .

Nielsen, J., Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, New Riders: Indianapolis, 2000.

Rosenfeld, L. and Morville, P., Information Architecture, second edition, O'Reilly, 2002.

HCI Basics 

Shneiderman, B. Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Human-Computer Interaction (Third Edition). Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, 1998. Amazon

Mayhew, D. J. Principles and Guidelines in Software User Interface Design. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1992. Amazon

Accessibility

Paciello, M., Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities.  CMP: Lawrence, KS, 2000.

Clark, J. (2003). Building accessible web sites. New Riders, Indianapolis, 2003

Thatcher, J, et all. Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance. friends of ED, 2006. ISBN: 978-1590596388. Amazon. "Understanding Web Accessibility" chapter online

Windows Interface Design

Arlov, L. GUI Design for Dummies. Foster City, CA: IDG Books. 1997. Amazon

Fowler, S. GUI Design Handbook. McGraw-Hill: New York, NY, 1998. 

Cooper, A. About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. IDG Books Worldwide: Foster City, CA, 1995. Amazon

UI Design and OO Methods

Constantine, L. and Lockwood, L., Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of Usage Centered Design, Addison Wesley: Boston, 199.

Kulak, D. and Guiley, E., Use Cases: Requirements in Context, Addison Wesley: Boston, 2000.

Van Harmelen, M., Object Modeling and User Interface Design: Designing Interactive Systems,  Addison Wesley: Boston, 2001.

Visual Design

Horton, W.K. The Icon Book, Wiley: New York, NY, 1994. Amazon

Mullet, K. and Sano, D. Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques. SunSoft Press: Mountain View, CA, 1995. Amazon

Tufte, E. R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press: Chesire, CT, 1983, Envisioning Information. Graphics Press: Chesire, CT, 1990, and Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Graphics Press: Cheshire, CT, 1997. Amazon

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