We may quibble over exact shades of blue users prefer or how important it is to break our code so we can still support IE6, but here are a few sites I think we can all agree are invaluable resources for both novice and advanced designers. I read these routinely and you should too.
1) Web Pages That Suck — learn good web design by looking at bad web design – Vincent Flanders and the people who submit sites to feature in “The Daily Sucker” deliver stellar advice to web designers through hilarious examples of what not to do.
2) useit.com: Jakob Nielsen on Usability and Web Design – This site is not about design. It’s about usability only and it excels at that. He’s the “Nielsen” part of “Nielsen Norman Group“, a leading usability company whose work you should be paying attention to if you do anything in web design or development.
3) UXmatters: Insights and Inspiration for the User Experience Community – This is a monthly ‘zine, rather than a frequent blog, with a number of contributors. Because of this, their articles often go into greater depth and have more solid references than your average design/UX blog. They also tend to cover more concise topics that may escape a generalist blog (for instance, this month one of their columns deals with using verbs as nouns in an interface).
4) Usability.gov – Yes, there is a government website focused on usability.
5) User Interface Engineering, a consulting firm – There’s a lot of really good information here.
6) No list of websites to read is complete without A List Apart. A List Apart: User Science is a direct link to their UX topics. Another ‘zine which goes in depth on topics you might not find on a more freqently updated blog.
