Amy Hillman and the Boxes & Arrows staff walk through how to approach, justify and manage the first UX project for your company

Great introduction, overview, and explanation of personas by Tina Calabria of Step Two. This is a long article, and also includes a great 6-page pdf version for free download. Great introduction to the topic and how and why to create personas. Also suggests some uses for personas.

Very detailed analysis of how usability can be a key component of agile methodologies. Explores the misconceptions and challenges of both schools with respect to the other. Details the agile development methodology. Contrasts the philosophies of both agile and UEX approaches. Discusses user-experience modeling in an agile framework with great examples and explanations.

In the world of cognitive psychology, there’s something known as an affordance. Affordances are clues that communicate to a user how they should use an object.

For example, assuming you’re familiar with the convention, a type-in box communicates to the user that they should click within the box and start typing if they want to enter data.

Good article in a Q&A format.

The Question: Are there any usability issues with using drag and drop controls in a web application?

The Answer: Good discussion - links to examples and other discussions

Good information architecture article by Donna Maurer.

Donna characterizes information seeking as happening in one of four modes (from the perspective of the seeker)

1. Known-item
2. Exploratory
3. Don't know what you need to know
4. Re-finding 

Daniel Read takes us through a personal, anecdotal story that discusses usability annoyances and their impacts.  Very well written, very good advice.

Lists and explains seven guiding precepts of good interface design.

Peter Morville on information architecture and the user-experience honeycomb

I've been practicing information architecture since 1994, and from Gopher to Google have seen dramatic changes in the landscape of organization, search and retrieval.

Through these ten tempestuous years, I've found the infamous three circle diagram to be a great tool for explaining how and why we must strike a unique balance on each project between business goals and context, user needs and behavior, and the available mix of content.

 

Presents philosophy that there are four classes of software:

• MeWare:  The developer creates software.  The developer uses it.  Nobody else does.
• ThemWare:  The developer creates software.  Other people use it.  The developer does not.
• UsWare:  The developer creates software.  Other people use it.  The developer uses it too.
• NobodyWare:  The developer creates software.  Nobody uses it.

Includes detailed real-world analysis of City Desk, a software package - applying the ideas