Suggestions on UI/UX design

[Michael May]

Hi everyone,

Can any of you recommend a few good resources on UI and UX design/
development? I'm not really sure where to start looking for this.

Thanks
Michael

[Richard Schneeman]

To get started this book helped me with a lot of the basics of UI

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Williams/dp/0321534042/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327526231&sr=1-7

Though you can go very in-depth into all the different fields from there, color, type, layout, etc.

I also subscribe to Smashing Magazine's rss feed for a bit of advice and inspiration.

The biggest thing that will help is trying to identify things you like or don't like and then figure out why. Once you can name why you like or don't like something, then you can make your own design better. It's a lot like programming there are many small different building blocks, though if your design fails, the program still compiles : )

--
Richard

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[Cheng Leong]

I think Jon Kolko's Thoughts on Interaction Design is good high level stuff
http://www.thoughtsoninteraction.com/

And when I asked a friend who is a professional IA/UX designer a couple of years ago, her recommendations were:

Bill Verplank, this is his website:
http://www.billverplank.com/professional.html
This is the google search results for him:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bill+verplank&btnG=Google+Search
I would highly recommend watching some of his lectures on youtube in
order to see what I was referring to with the depth of his
drawing-metaphors:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=bill+verplank&aq=f
I remembered the other guy's name (who does screen optimization for
forms) - Luke Wroblewski, sadly he was just at SXSW where there was a
usability session going on, but his books are great, too:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/index.asp
The book I might suggest is "Web Form Design: the Book" - while you're
not working on web forms, it's still very useful info on the design/nav.
of them.
Regarding training for UI/Usability, if you're looking for more of a
usability-testing focus: I suggest a lot of reading, talking with
Usability testers, and I can offer up about a billion links that I find
good.
For an interface-design focus: User Interface 14: http://www.uie.com/events/
Also, An Event Apart (I hear) does some great sessions:
http://aneventapart.com/
(and Luke W. will be there in May)
If you're looking for a course, I recommend HFI's "The Science and Art
of Effective Web and Application Design" - I took it a year ago and it
has some great take-away information.