Michael Mahemoff's Links
Software Usability
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ACM's Links to
Human-Computer Interation Sites
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HCI
Conferences and workshops Dates and paper deadlines for
anything related to HCI. Also links to the homepages, which can be
useful if you want to obtain papers from previous years (when
you're lucky enough to find them there!).
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The Interface Hall
of Shame Or, "How not to design your software". Don't worry,
there's a Hall of
Fame as well. The original iarchitect.com site is gone, and these
seem to be mirrors. The bad news is they haven't been updated since
2000. The good news is blunders like this are timeless (maybe not such
good news, come to think of it).
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useit.com
Web usability Guru Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly column for web designers.
HCI/Usability Patterns
Portals
These portals have much more info on HCI patterns than this page - what are
you doing here?!!!
Pattern Languages
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Common Ground: A Pattern Language for Human-Computer Interface
Design [HTML - Jennifer Tidwell]
A substantial
language, with patterns covering aspects of the
user-interface.
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Experiences -- A Pattern Language for User Interface Design
[HTML - Todd Coram and Jim Lee]
A well-integrated language
of about 25 patterns with a similar scope to Tidwell's, although
the actual content is quite different. I should mention here that
Todd was an excellent shepherd for our PLOP 1999 submission :-). He
has a very thorough understanding of the often-overlooked
language aspect of patterns.
- My research, which applies high-level and
low-level patterns with the intention of bringing SE and HCI closer
together.
Usability Process
Other Usability Patterns
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Evolution in Action: HCI in a World of Pliant Computing.
[PDF - Jed Harris and Austin Henderson]
A futuristic paper about pliant systems. Pliant systems researchers
claim that human factors should be considered for systems at a deeper
level, to fundamentally redesign computer architectures. Patterns?
Part of the vision is the application of patterns as a common language
among multiple human and computer agents.
Also look out for Tom Erickson's work while you're there.
Web Resources on Patterns and Pattern Languages
Patterns of Town Planning and Building
Where do patterns come from? Actually, many disciplines have used patterns in
one form or another. Formally speaking, though, the roots of software design
patterns can be traced back to Christopher Alexander's work on town planning
and buildings.
Software Engineering