• UI, UX, IA, ID and Usability websites: the definitive collection

• 14 November 2011 by Dean 3 Comments

Don’t be confused by these terms. After demystifying the differences between, and definitions of, UI, UX, IA, ID and Usability, I’d like to share this list of design resource and inspiration with you. These are all quality sites and blogs.

Please leave a comment if you know a site that should be on this list.

User Experience sites and blogs

Everyday UX - http://www.everydayux.com/ : A nice weekly roundup of articles.

Jesse James Garrett - http://blog.jjg.net/ : From Jesse James Garrett, the man who coined the term Ajax and wrote my favourite book (which is also very influential to many hardcore UX designers) The Elements of User Experience.

Adaptive Path - http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas : Blog from the experience design firm founded by Jesse James Garret.

Inspire UX - http://www.inspireux.com/ : User Experience quotes and articles to inspire and connect the UX community.

UX Booth - http://www.uxbooth.com/ : Articles and resources on usability, user experience, and interaction design.

Konigi - http://konigi.com/ : News, resources, and tools for User Experience designers.

Usability

Jakob Nielsen - http://www.useit.com/ : Jakob Nielsen, known by any decent designer, has been called, among other things ‘the smartest person on the Web’. A god of usability.

Baymard Institute - http://baymard.com/ – a research group publishing free biweekly articles, focusing on how to improve conversion and web usability.

Design and pattern collections

User Interface design examples and collections of design patterns

Quote from UI-Patterns.com… “User Interface Design patterns are recurring solutions that solve common design problems. Design patterns are standard reference points for the experienced user interface designer.”

UI-Patterns.com – http://ui-patterns.com/ :  Read insightful design pattern articles and browse screenshot examples. They go beyond just screenshot collections, with useful analysis about each pattern.

Yahoo Developer Patterns – http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/ : Shares user interface patterns with the web design and development community, with insights on each pattern.

Welie – http://www.welie.com/patterns/index.php : A large collection of patterns in Interaction Design.

Infragistics Quince – http://quince.infragistics.com/ : A community driven UX and UI pattern library, an interactive site built in Silverlight.

Pattern Tap – http://patterntap.com/ : A good pattern library, allowing you to create sets of favourites for later reference.

Designing Interfaces – http://designinginterfaces.com/blog/ : Patterns from the Designing Interfaces book.

Endeca – http://patterns.endeca.com/ : Describes principled ways to solve common user interface design problems.

Design Snips – http://www.designsnips.com/ : Good source for inspiration, this site is a user-submit gallery of unique web site designs.

UI Scraps - http://uiscraps.tumblr.com/ : Good, bad and noteworthy user interface designs.

Smiley Cat – http://www.smileycat.com/design_elements/ : An alternative web design showcase, this is a large collection of screenshots.

Blink UX – http://blinkux.com/insights/design-library : Design library from a user experience research and design firm.

MephoBox – http://box.mepholio.com/ – Another screenshot, inspirational, collection of both websites and design patterns.

Cool Homepages – http://www.coolhomepages.com/ – Another screenshot collection site, focusing on cool home pages.

CSS Bake – http://www.cssbake.com/ : Design collection which focuses on the little details that make up a larger composition. CSSbake focuses on the ‘ingredients’ of a website.

General, multi-disciplinary, or just hard to categorise

Fast Design Co. - http://www.fastcodesign.com/ : A great blog which is really relevant to making successful websites for profit or business, as Fast Design Co. say, they are trying to ‘bridge the fuzzy border between design and business’

Stop Design - http://stopdesign.com/ : Creative outlet of Douglas Bowman, Creative Director at Twitter.

Web Design Practices - http://www.webdesignpractices.com/ : Ongoing examination and research into current digital design practices.

User Interface Engineering - http://www.uie.com/articles/ : Articles from a leading research, training, and consulting firm specializing in web site and product usability.

Boxes and Arrows - http://www.boxesandarrows.com/ : Peer-written design journal with a focus on graphic design, interaction design and information architecture.

Web Style Guide - http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/index.html : unabridged, online version of the third edition of Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites.

Six Revisions - http://sixrevisions.com/ : Publishes practical and useful articles for designers and web developers.

TED - http://blog.ted.com/ : Technology, Entertainment, Design. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Although usually not web-focused, TED is very inspirational.

Graph Paper - http://www.graphpaper.com/ : A bit of everything from one of the the co-founders of Behavior, an interaction design consultancy. Many posts about User Experience Design and Interface Design.

LukeW Ideation + Design - http://www.lukew.com/ff/ - Publications on the critical details and big picture behind digital product design.

• Categories:

  Design

• Tags:

  IA (Information Architecture), ID (Information Design), UI (User Interface), Usability, UX ( User Experience)