Design & Usability Reading

This is a list of articles related to the design and usability of GNOME and open source software. Feel free to update the list as required.

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system" -- Gall's law

Guidelines

• Luke Wroblewski: Multi-Device Layout Patterns

• Wallpaper guidelines by Jimmac

Books

• Donald Norman: The Design of Everyday Things

• Jeff Johnson: GUI Bloopers 2.0

• Steve Krug: Don't Make Me Think

• Marty Neumeier: The Brand Gap

• Dan Saffer: Microinteractions: Designing with Details

• Seiden & Gothelf: Lean UX

• Hanington & Martin: Universal Methods of Design

Blogs and magazines

• Johnny Holland

• Ignore the Code

• Libre Graphics Magazine

• Little Big Details

• Screenshots of Despair

• The Layout

• Feltron Annual Report

• http://uxmyths.com/

Articles

• Too Many Knobs

• Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

• Aza Raskin: Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo

• UX Myths: Build your website based on evidence, not false beliefs!

• Asa Raskin: So you want to be a designer

• Startups, this is how design works

• Havoc Pennington: It has to work

• Scott Berkun: The Myth of Discoverability

• Deiter Rams - Ten Principles for Good Design

• Havoc Pennington: Choosing our Preferences

2011

• Coordinating usability testing in Free Software - Jan-Christoph Borchardt

2009

• Gnome Usability Research Paper 1 - AntonKerezov

2008

• Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it - MatthewPaulThomas

2004

• Usability Discussions in Open Source Development - M.B. Twidale & D.M. Nichols

2003

• What Next for GNOME Usability? Presentation and paper - CalumBenson

• The Usability of Open Source Software - D.M. Nichols & M.B. Twidale

2002

• Free Software User Interfaces - Havoc Pennington

• Review of CHI2002 Open Source Usability Workshop and SIG - CalumBenson

2001

• Why GNOME Hackers Should Care About Usability - SethNickell

• What is Open Source and is it Usable? - Robert Watkins, Usability Professionals Association.

• Usability and Open Source Software - David M. Nichols, Kirsten Thomson and Stuart A. Yeates