Resources for designers of information retrieval systems:

Screen Design - The visual design of the screen can impact usability. Color, font, the use of images, and layout of screen elements are essential design components.

Searching and Navigation - Ease of navigation and search/browsing options are critical components of usability.

Metadata and Description - Good metadata and site description will help users find the appropriate website.

Information Structures and Organization - How information is organized and categorized shapes access. For systems with an underlying searchable database, the structure of the database itself will determine the outcome of searches.

Usability Testing - Includes resources on how to evaluate sites and on testing for usability.

Screen Design

Web typography overview
An online guide to designing user-friendly web sites by Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton. Contains much practical advice on site design, page layout, and graphics.

Design Lab
These articles written by Dmitry Kirsanov address the aesthetics of design essentials such as color, fonts, shape, texture, dynamism, the principles of using artwork, photography, and animation, plus some more specific issues such as web site navigation and logo design.

Webmonkey's Web Design 101
Jim Frew on the basics of web design (July 1997). Who is the audience? What is the message?

IBM Ease of Use Guidelines
Describes a user-centered design process for producing websites that are user-friendly.

PixArt Tutorials
Provides online tutorials to Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Painter, Corel, Illustrator, Freehand, and Pre-Press applications.

Buttons for webpages
A step-by-step tutorial explaining one way to make buttons in Photoshop.

Web Developer's Virtual Library
Offers tutorials on Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

Webmonkey's Crash Course on Photoshop
This tutorial, developed by Jim Frew, creative director of the Humboldt Institute for Technological Studies, is delivered in six lessons: 1) Cropping, changing mode, resizing, file formats; 2) Selection tools, filters; 3) Text tool, layers, the rule of 51; 4) Merging graphics, the path tool; 5) Faking images - think lights and shadows; 6) Making illustrations (May 1998).

Webmonkey's Image Editing 101
Jim Frew on how to create the best possible picture with the smallest possible file size (October 1996).

CNET Help's How-Tos for Photoshop
Provides links to tutorials from around the Web, including Webmonkey's crash course listed above. Other tutorials include creating a transparent image for the Web, managing color, and making an animated GIF.

Web typography overview
From the Yale Style Manual.

Typographic style concerns
Considerations specific to web legibility. From the Yale Style Manual.

Freeware fonts
Microsoft's index lists dozens of freeware font foundries.

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Searching and Navigation

The Navigation and Usability Guide
Article by Jen Muehlbauer reviewing principles of good navigation design.

Navigation in Web Applications
Hal Shubin, Interaction Design & Margaret M. Meehan, Text Matters
This paper discusses several common navigational problems and techniques for avoiding them in designing Web applications. Although the focus is on applications rather than on purely informational sites, these guidelines can be used for designing most websites.

Spotlight on Navigation Design
Links to sites which address designing for navigability.

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Metadata and Description

W3C Metadata and Resource Description
Use this site to stay current on the latest developments in metadata protocols.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
The Dublin Core is a metadata element set intended to facilitate discovery of electronic resources. Originally conceived for author-generated description of Web resources, it has attracted the attention of formal resource description communities such as museums, libraries, government agencies, and commercial organizations.

Links to Metadata Web Pages
Links to the major organizations working on the development of metadata standards for various communities on the Web.

SearchEngineWatch.com
Practical advice on using metadata tags as well as information about how search engines work.

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Information Structures and Organization

Putting your Database on the Web
Norm Friesen, Academic Technologies for Learning, University of Alberta
This article will provide examples of how database information can be integrated with web pages. It will explain the basic techniques that make this integration possible, and will undertake an introductory-level comparative evaluation of the competing products and solutions that allow you to put your database on the web.

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Usability Testing

BOBBY
Bobby is a web-based tool that analyzes web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities. CAST offers Bobby as a free public service in order to further its mission to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through the innovative uses of computer technology.

Children's Software Revue
A set of criteria for evaluating the usability of software for children.

Criteria for Evaluation of Internet Information Resources
A comprehensive list of criteria to use for evaluating websites compiled by Alistair Smith, VUW Department of Library and Information Studies, New Zealand. This is a "toolbox" of criteria that enable Internet information sources to be evaluated for use in libraries, e.g. for inclusion in resource guides, and helping users evaluate information found.

Information Quality WWW Virtual Library: The Internet Guide to Construction of Quality Online Resources
Dr T.Matthew Ciolek and Irena M. Goltz
This set of pages keeps track of online resources relevant for evaluation, development and administration of high quality factual/scholarly networked information systems.

Usable Web
Usable Web is a collection of links about human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific to the World Wide Web. Value adds: descriptions, multiple organizational schemes (by date, site, topic, popularity), search engine queries to even more resources.

Useit.com
Jakob Nielsen, a writer and consultant on Web usability issues, maintains this website which has bi-weekly articles on usability as well as links to related sites at http://www.useit.com/hotlist/.

The Usability Methods Toolbox
Information about many methods and techniques used in usability evaluation. Compiled by James Hom.

Usability Toolkit
Developed under the auspices of the Society for Technical Communication, the Usability Toolkit is a collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews.

World Wide Access: Accessible Web Design
Practical tips on improving usability compiled by the University of Washington.

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