User Interface Links

Last updated September, 1998

The following are some of the good web sites that deal with user interface issues.

The best site belongs to Jacob Nielsen (formerly of Sun Computer, now in a partnership with Don Norman). Nielsen used to write a monthly column called Alert Box for the Sun Computer main site. Now it comes out twice a month on his own web site. In addition, his web site contains links to other good sites. Nielsen has been thinking about hypertext for a long time and he has reasonable opinions on many web design issues. Nielsen's Alert Box.

A new site (as of July, 1998) is Tog's Ask Tog.com web site. Tog is (of course) the famous Bruce Tognazzini, formerly of Apple, then Sun and now head of his own small UI company Quailwood Software. Each week, Tog has answered a user interface question and has posted some other fun things on his site. Welcome back Tog!

The Bay Area has its own local chapter of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (known by the charming acronym SIGCHI). The Bay Area group is called BayCHI and they have monthly meetings at the Mecca of User Interface, Xerox PARC. This is their web site.

The national SIGCHI has its own home page. This is their site.

David Siegel, famous web site designer, has lots of pages about web site design. Although David really approaches sites from the perspective of a graphics designer, his ideas usually make sense and are worth reading. Here is just one of many possible links into David Siegel's world.

Dave Winer, long time Mac developer, writes an essay every few days or so. His essays range all over the map but I enjoy reading them a great deal. Sometimes they touch on user interface issues, at least regarding the web. Winer is focused mainly on the Mac, and its relation to the Internet. He is also very interested in the software industry, especially from the perspective of one of the little guys. This is DaveNet 97.