Useful Stuff
Wi-Fi Security
Are public wi-fi networks safe? See my post here.
Web Tools
For those with multiple computers:
keep your bookmarks on the web at xmarks.com. Allows different profiles (I have home and work) and allows you to sync all your bookmarks from multiple computers. It will even store are your web passwords, if you want. Compatible with Firefox and other inferior browsers. Oh, and it’s free, and really worth the price!
keep your notes on the web at evernote.com. You can take web page snapshots too, and it’ll even do OCR on pics! (Haven’t tried that functionality yet.) Also compatible with Firefox and other inferior browsers and also free.
For those with multiple colleagues:
Here’s another useful web app: meetingwizard. You select certain dates & times for a meeting, send out a notice to the attendees, they log in, indicate when they are free and not. Once everyone has indicted their free/busy times, meeetingwizard sends you email, you log in, figure out the best time and meetingwizard notifies everyone.
Yes, you can use outlook, but only when everybody’s on the same system.
User Interface Design Books
A lot of UI books are too specific (e.g. “how to design fun web pages”). They shouldn’t be, since user centred design is a set of methodologies that can be applied generally. A lot of HCI books are about HCI research. They are basically text books, and not very useful in UI practice. Useful for HCI researchers though.
There are only two books I recommend, but they’re really good.
Beyer & Holtzblatt (1977) Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems.
Really a how-to manual, unlike many HCI/UI books I’ve read. Very nice for anyone of any skill level.
Nielsen (2003) Usability Engineering.
Covers lots of stuff and gives good practical advice.
UI/UX Resources
Interesting sites with resources, such as templates and step-by-step guides.
http://www.usability.gov/index.html Geared to websites, but still applicable to almost anything else. Very good for usability experts and neophytes as well.
http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/guidelines_and_methods/index.html. Good too, but requires a little digging around because some content is on the site itself and some is on other sites whose links are provided.
Articles
One of my articles won an award partly for being useful to software engineers and developers (“one of 14 high-impact papers chosen” from the first decade of the CASCON proceedings). Here it is:
Singer, J., Lethbridge, T., Vinson, N., Anquetil, N. (1997). An examination of software engineering work practices. In Proceedings of CASCON ’97, pp. 209-223, October, 1997, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. PDF
Comments»
No comments yet — be the first.