The Anatomy of an Icon

“How do you create an icon?”. Here's some helpful steps on how to go about creating one.

Courtesy of Simple Bits

Web Interface practices

Take a look at examples of some popular web sites, like Blogger, Wired News,etc.; and how they transformed their respective web sites. Read about it here.

Info courtesy of

90% of All Usability Testing is Useless!?

Ninety percent of all usability testing performed on Web sites is useless. This is not to say that it doesn’t have a significant role to play in user experience design. Lane Becker explains here.

ROI Is Not a Silver Bullet: Five Actionable Steps for Valuing User Experience Design

For years now, the “ROI of User Experience” has been sought as a means to justify larger corporate investments in web design. Scott Hirsh discussses how design managers can use valuation methodology to better increase their visibility and position themselves as a strategic corporate resource. Read about it here.

The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams

Jesse James Garrett provides insightful tips on what it takes to build a successful web team.

Six Tips for Improving Your Design Documentation

If you are a designer or product planner, you probably create documents of some kind to capture your design decisions and solutions.Here are a few of them.

Practical Applications: Visio or HTML for Wireframes

Clients become engaged when they can interact with HTML wireframes. Clients not only enjoy the process more, but they also get a better contextual understanding of the features than with paper prototypes. Some insight to the use of Visio or HTML for building wireframes.

Read how Frog Design helped Sun's web site shine

Sun Microsystems came to frog design with a challenging proposition: redesign 40,000 pages of sun.com in mere months. Frog exceeded all expectations, to the delight of the client and industry analysts alike. Read about it here.

Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms

Brian Suda and Matt Riggott talk about methods by which to enhance usability on your web site. Go here.

WEB STYLE GUIDE, 2nd edition

In 160 pages of expert instruction, authors Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton put the essence of the Yale University Center for Advanced Instructional Media's wonderful online site design guide into traditional print.

The book begins the presentation of its helpful and forward-looking advice with a discussion of the overall process of defining the objectives and users of your Web site, as well as the goals you will use to measure your progress. The authors then use time-tested, traditional print concepts to clearly illustrate how to make your site interface welcoming and efficient. High-quality illustrations show how to design for overall style and professional appeal. The sections on typography and editorial style set this manual apart from many Web style guides with attention to the fine details that separate the good sites from the great.

Take a look here.

The Usability Methods Toolbox

Welcome to the Usability Methods Toolbox! James Hom has attempted to compile information about almost all of the methods and techniques (well, ok, a lot of them) used in usability evaluation. I hope you find helpful information here, or at least a pointer to additional information that will help you find what you need.

Design and Layout

Within the Design and Layout area you'll find a wide range of annotated links to web design tutorials, tips, and resources, usability, cross-platform and cross-browser issues, information architecture, creativity, and more.

Brand Value and the User Expereience

In “Brand Value and the User Experience,” Kelly Goto defines four guiding principles that should be a part of any usability or user experience specialist's toolkit. Read more.

Inspiration from Lynda

Lynda Weinman is one of today's web experts on design, visual communication and motion graphics. Here is a link to one of her pages that reflects on pages that inspre her.

Tips, Tricks, How-To, and Beyond

This site was created to help you design "a better web page". Tips offered here cover how to build a table, what is a style sheet and how to use it, to how to make your web page fit in any screen resolution. Check it out here.

Back to the Future

Ever wonder how som eweb sites have transformed over the years? Go here to WaybackMachine and see for yourself.