Design Guidelines and Patterns
One of our goals at Peak Usability is to increase awareness and adoption of good usability and user centred design practices. The following is a list of sites and articles we hope you will find useful.
| Title | Author / Company | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Ten recommended heuristics | Jakob Nielsen | Provides an overview of ten heuristics that are widely used. |
| Research based guidelines on Web Design and Usability Issues | National Cancer Institute (US) | Very useful and a great style guide example as well. |
| Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines | Jared Spool | Outlines why heuristics or guidelines are just that - "guidelines" (not rules). Highlights the importance of still testing your site. |
| Global Expectations of Users' Mental Models for E-Commerce Web Layouts | Michael Bernard & Ashwin Sheshadri | Outlines where users expect to find common objects such as 'Search'. |
| Paper prototyping | Usability net | Good overview about paper prototyping. |
| First Principles from Bruce Tognazzini | Nielsen Norman Group | Principles fundamental to the architecture and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments or the web. |
| Design Pattern Library | Yahoo | Patterns describes an optimal solution to a common problem within a specific context. |
| Welie.com: Web Design Patterns | Martijn van Welie | Welie has tried to capture every bit of good design he has encountered. Also includes GUI and MobileUI design patterns. |
| Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design | Jenifer Tidwell | This site contains excerpts and patterns from her Designing Interfaces book which we highly recommend. |
| Design Patterns | Brian Christiansen | This collection captures findings of consistent, unique or interesting interfaces and design flows from across the web. |