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Karen Black wants to know if there are any good web sites or books out there
on human factors and UI design.
Karen, doing a search for "usability," "interface design," or "human
factors" on Amazon returns hundreds of relevant results. Specifically, I've
found Jakob Nielsen's books worth reading (particularly _Designing Web
Usability_), and I've also gotten a copy of Microsoft's _Windows User
Experience_ (also available electronically on MSDN.com).
As far as web pages are concerned, here are some that I have found very
useful:
The tech comm connection to all this? Most of the books and the web sites I
mentioned above have these two things to say about usability and interface
design as they relate to documentation:
1. Documentation can have as many usability problems as whatever the user
guides and help are documenting.
2. Documenting around poor design is no substitute for developing a usable
product.
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