Course Media Resource List

This includes reading, video, audio and interactive resources.

Resources are given in assignment order.

Pre-Opening
Week 1 Why Design is Important
Week 2: Web vs Print Design
Week 2: The role of graphics, color choices and font styles in user experience
Week 3: User Behavior
Week 4: Supplementary Content
Week 5: Online Tools and resources

From course description:

Web Pages That Suck Vincent Flanders' rather in-your-face site .
UseIt.com: Jakob Neilsen's publicly available content
Wikipedia article on Web Usability
Usability Body of Knowledge
Copyright vs. creative commons resources:
- 10 Big Myths about copyright explained
- Creative Commons

From application task:

Week 1: Why Design is Important

http://www.useit.com/about/nographics.html which explains Jakob Neilsen's purpose behind a text-only site.

Week 2: Web vs Print Design

Jakob Nielsen on Print vs Web Design, in 1999: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html Much of this is still applicable, especially if you are designing for mobile users
A very basic breakdown of Web Design vs Print Design: http://desktoppub.about.com/od/transitionprintweb/tp/Print_Design_vs_Web_Design.htm
An excellent discussion of the disconnect between the two types of design, professionally: http://www.myintervals.com/blog/2010/06/16/web-design-vs-print-design-and-the-wired-interactive-magazine/

Week 2: The role of graphics, color choices and font styles in user experience

How newspapers need to evolve for the web http://blog.ted.com/2009/04/02/the_fate_of_the/
designing for people :http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_kelley_on_human_centered_design.html
Discussion of several common image formats and their best usages: http://www.acasystems.com/en/web-thumb-activex/faq-image-format.htm
Wikipedia entries on graphic file types:
SVG support in IE9 beta http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/In-your-hands-IE9-and-SVG-Past-Present-and-Future-of-Vector-Graphics-for-the-Web
Jakob Neilsen on changing link colors: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040503.html
Discussion of contrast with demos: http://www.webdesignref.com/chapters/13/ch13-16.htm
Color theory in general usability (short, easy read): http://www.colormatters.com/usability.html
Color meanings as generally accepted: http://www.webdesignref.com/chapters/13/ch13-16.htm
Color blindness and usability resources and tools http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/colorblind.html
http://www.cooper.com/journal/2009/09/shadow_of_the_moon.html a discussion of typography and how it relates to web design, including the future use of fonts on the web
CSS support of webfonts: http://www.html5trends.com/tutorials/all-you-wanted-to-know-about-web-fonts/
On Web Typography is an excellent discussion of font choices and how they affect users: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/on-web-typography/
Real Web Type in Real Web Context describes the practicality of the Web Font standard: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/real-web-type-in-real-web-context
Cufon: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/
SVG fonts in Mobile Safari: http://opentype.info/blog/2010/04/13/the-ipad-and-svg-fonts-in-mobile-safari/

Week 3: User Behavior

http://experiencedynamics.blogs.com/site_search_usability/2006/04/designing_for_t.html
Eyetracking and Web Site Design at Usability.gov http://usability.gov/articles/newsletter/pubs/032010news.html
Eyetools: http://eyetools.com Understanding Eye Tracking blog series (all are short)
Impact of Aesthetics on Attitudes Towards Websites at Usability.gov http://usability.gov/articles/062009news.html
User Behavior and the "globalness" of Internet http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue2/taiwan.html - dry, scholarly, but informative regarding languange and culture's impact on usability
Credibility at Usability.gov http://usability.gov/articles/102009news.html
ROI on increased usability http://www.useit.com/alertbox/government-nonprofit.html

Week 4: Supplementary content

http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/accessible_photo_gallery.asp
http://www.dontclick.it/ is an interesting exercise in interactive content and alternative user interaction. Every step of the way, the user is given the choice to continue, and the site is actually somewhat entertaining as an alternative human interaction experiment.

Creative commons and copyright

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/webcopyr.html
http://websitetips.com/about/copyright/
http://creativecommons.org/about
http://www.cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf <flash interactive on copyright in the US, OPTIONAL.
http://creativecommons.org/ < search engine for finding CC licensed content

Wireframing info and tools:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_wireframe < If you are wondering "What's a wireframe?"
http://www.google.com/images?q=web+wireframe <If you are stuck for inspiration here's the google image search for "web wireframe"

http://webwithoutwords.com/ < This is a great idea, taking popular websites and stripping them down to wireframes:
http://www.wirify.com/ <And a bookmarklet that does the same thing to ANY webpage (free version is not saveable):