This is a really good checklist for what modern URL design looks like.

Dustin Curtis didn't like the American Airlines website, and complained on his blog; a UX architect from AA gets back to him and explains how things are; Dustin responds. I need to write something longer on this, but in a nutshell: I understand Dustin's position, but it feels naive, and I think he confuses corporate culture with business practice. I want my airline to have a corporate culture of conservatism and fustiness, just like I want my bank to be severe and serious. That doesn't meant their website has to suck, but it also doesn't mean that their sucky website is their CEO's fault.

Yes, it's an app about weight loss. But: the UI is superb in its touchability and suitability for task at hand, and the reporting functionality is solid (and looks like it'll get much better).

"I’d recommend that if you’re considering or actively building Ajax/RIA applications, you should consider the Uncanny Valley of user interface design and recognize that when you build a “desktop in the web browser”-style application, you’re violating users’ unwritten expectations of how a web application should look and behave. This choice may have significant negative impact on learnability, pleasantness of use, and adoption." Yes.

"Just remember, 'There’s only us.'" Some good analysis; fair and even-handed.

Some interesting user research, especially when it comes to understandings of the device, and perceptions of the App Store. It's amazing how people's attitude to price changes when you've got a small screen, a market saturated with cheap goods, and a product that isn't in a box.

"...words are a critically important driver in the success of the end user experience, and therefore a writer is a critically important player in the beginning. Period." Spot on stuff here - makes me feel guilty for being lax on copy on some recent work.

A nice reminder about the perception of interfaces (as opposed to the reality).

"Instead, user research for the Web should delve into the qualitative aspects of design to understand how and why people respond to what has been created, and, more importantly, how to apply that insight to future work." Lane Becker on fine form.

"Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6." You'd have thought Camelot user-test their scratchcards. Clearly not!

"Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding." Great Tog article on keyboard vs mouse interfaces.

"These are books that we like or that have influenced us. We hope you'll find our remarks useful." Very comprehensive - probably too much so - but some interesting titles I wasn't aware of amid the sea of more obvious choices.

Forgotten how wonderful(ly dreadful) this collection of interaction cock-ups from Lotus Notes was. Bits of it are just painful.

"...a user interface design conceived by someone without detailed understanding of the tools used to construct it often suggests good, but expensive to implement designs. There's a sweet-spot between good, and expensive to build..."

"Fitts’s Law is Made of Lines" is a rough summary of this, but in short - a neat graphical explanation of Fitt's Law, with some useful notes, too.

"metrics, data management, and usability for online games" - awesome blog discovery of the day. Just looks fab. Insta-subscribe!

"Scrolling works. Long pages work. Anything else tends to be informationarchitecturitis."

Some nice, insightful commentary on the relevance of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines in 2007. Good stuff, for anyone interested in interface design.

"What does rich mean to a UI (user interface) designer who wants to craft intelligent, compelling, and memorable interactions?"

"In this paper, I ... argue that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users’ goals can be better satisfied through other means"

"You’re considering retrofitting an existing website/web app to be more accessible to mobile users. What are your options?"

Luke Wroblewski examines and illustrates ways to architect tabular display of data. Some clear thinking, and good illustration.

Chris Messina collects a big pile of design patterns from across the web. Then he sticks them in a Flickr collection. Useful.

Resolving the conflicts between UCD and Agile processes. It's not necessarily as hard as it might seem...

(by Jared Spool)

Very true. This, and a beautiful piece of print design I saw this weekend, are giving me _all_ sorts of ideas...

danc on fine form again.

(From a design perspective, but, to be honest, it impacts on everything).

Good stuff from Mike Kuniavsky - quite a while back, too.

Timo Arnall catalogues the various uses of the dashed line as visual metaphor.

Todd Williams from Adaptive Path looks at a new (mental/process) framework for design. Really good article - even if you don't ascribe to it, there's loads to think on in there.

Crazy Egg is, basically, low-budget heatmapping for the web. Powered by Rails - it'd be interesting to look into this more when certain things go live...

Sometimes there’s a lot more to simple than meets the eye.

I've read this several times over the past year. Really is time to stick it into delicious, I feel

First in a series on patterns in design.