Design guidelines & 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 usability heuristics Jakob Nielsen Provides an overview of ten general principles for user interface design (termed 'heuristics') that are widely used.
Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines Usability.gov Very useful 'best practice' guidelines with a great style guide example.
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 of Interaction Design from Bruce Tognazzini Nielsen Norman Group Principles fundamental to the architecture and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments or the web.
Guide to Website Navigation Design Patterns Cameron Chapman Explores the characteristics, drawbacks and use of common site navigation design patterns.
User-Led Does Not Equal User-Centered Lawrence Kitson A frank article that strips back user-centric design focus to its useful and practical form.
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library Yahoo This design pattern library shares user interface patterns with the online web design and developer community.
Welie.com: Pattern library 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 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.
User Interface Design Patterns Anders Toxboe - UI-Patterns.com This website seeks to better the situation for the UI designer. The purpose of this site is over time to fill some of the gaps - especially by providing code examples as to how the different patterns can be implemented.
Web Application Guidelines Sun Microsystems Created by a set of user interface designers, usability specialists, and visual designers, at Sun for the purpose of outlining a look and feel for web applications that could be used consistently across multiple products and systems.
JAVA - Look and Feel Design Guidelines Sun Microsystems Guidelines for creating a consistent look and feel for JAVA programs across multiple operating platforms.
Pattern Tap Squared Eye A growing community driven collection of design patterns and screenshots that allows users to create and share their own sets of patterns and antipatterns.
AJAX Patterns Publicly editable wiki The publicly editable repository of all things Ajax. Patterns, Frameworks, Libraries, Tools.
.