Jakob Neilson's site is a treasure trove of usability information.
http://www.useit.com/
37 Signals will often write blog posts outlining particular design decisions in their products.
http://www.37signals.com/svn/
For a more specific topic, I have been researching typography. Something really simple to do (for which I am in the process of doing); get your text baselines to line up ("baseline rhythm"). It will make your site easier to read. Here's some great writeups on the subject.
We're looking for good examples of sticky signup processes. Asking users for the 'fun' info and sneaking in the necessary nuts, blots, and email confirmation later seems like a good way to go. Thoughts? Examples?
I'll toss another hat in Tufte's ring. His stuff can be pretty meta, but once the concepts are in your head, you start looking at design much differently.
If I hadn't read 'The Quantitative Display of Visual Information' I think that my design work would be much more cluttered and confusing. Reading the book actually made me want to be a better designer -- I knew, instinctively and through his demonstrations, that my work was definitely not up to par. Any book that can cut through the dense pretenses of a cocky young designer deserves some respect ;D
I constantly check http://www.styleboost.com
It's not really about usability but more like a barometer of what's considered good design these days. If I ever need design inspiration this is where I trek to first.
Sometimes it's also helpful to experiencing good usability. So I suggest using OS X, after awhile I found myself looking at software in a different way.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] threadThere you can find a lot of great posts about user experience.
How to use contrast to your advantage- http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/rule-three-contrast-co...
Use colors that have varying intensities, not just differnet colors. Focus on how it looks in greyscale http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/becoming-a-master-desi...
Visualizing Fitt's Law http://particletree.com/features/visualizing-fittss-law/
Software Has personality. http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2007/09/lightrooms_g...
Copy sites you like, such as: http://orderedlist.com/articles/single-line-css#comments or http://www.joyent.com/
How to make your designs suck less: http://jimwhimpey.com/blog/2007/simple-ways-to-help-your-des...
Load faster, by doing a low-res version first. http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=464
How to do sound design http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/why_is_that_thing_beeping...
More on Sound Design http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/03/22/how-to-make-user-...
Use smart color pickers http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6434
Whitespace Matters! http://alistapart.com/articles/whitespace
You can make a UI feel responsive, by minimizing the number of clicks http://tantek.com/log/2007/02.html#d19t1813
Write Production UIs, never use placeholders http://a-simian-mind.blogspot.com/2007/03/user-interface-is-...
A gradient Tutorial http://9rules.com/blog/2006/08/a-gradient-tutorial/
Aza's tips http://ajaxian.com/archives/death-of-the-desktop-by-aza-rask...
(An up-mod didn't seem quite sufficient.)
If you read other people's blogs, they find the interesting stuff for you.
http://www.37signals.com/svn/ http://daringfireball.net http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
When you start to see that they keep linking to a site, and saying there's a good article there, then start reading that site too ;)
Jakob Neilson's site is a treasure trove of usability information. http://www.useit.com/
37 Signals will often write blog posts outlining particular design decisions in their products. http://www.37signals.com/svn/
For a more specific topic, I have been researching typography. Something really simple to do (for which I am in the process of doing); get your text baselines to line up ("baseline rhythm"). It will make your site easier to read. Here's some great writeups on the subject.
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/04/30/typography-baselin... http://nubyonrails.com/articles/get-rhythm-in-your-baseline
And here's an online tool that will generate a CSS file with all the appropriate measurements: http://topfunky.com/baseline-rhythm-calculator/
http://www.baekdal.com/articles/
The book "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug is a classic.
Yup...I liked "Don't Make Me Think".
http://useit.com/
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-new-answers?topic_...
http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...
http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informatio...
Functioning Form: http://www.lukew.com/ff/
flow|state: http://miksovsky.blogs.com
Bokardo (social design): http://bokardo.com
WeBreakStuff: http://blog.webreakstuff.com/
37signals: http://37signals.com/svn
ParticleTree: http://particletree.com/
Jensen Harris (Office 2K7): http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/
Usability in the News: http://www.usernomics.com/news/user-interface-design-news.ht...
The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp...
http://psdtuts.com/designing-tutorials/elements-of-great-web...
http://psdtuts.com/interface-tutorials/making-a-message-stri...
Here is another good one, the domain is pretty self explanatory
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm
http://pageflakes.com
http://widgetbox.com
https://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/new
http://netvibes.com
If I hadn't read 'The Quantitative Display of Visual Information' I think that my design work would be much more cluttered and confusing. Reading the book actually made me want to be a better designer -- I knew, instinctively and through his demonstrations, that my work was definitely not up to par. Any book that can cut through the dense pretenses of a cocky young designer deserves some respect ;D
http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/web_forms.html
It's on the Functioning Form blog for interaction designers:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/
Isn't good design supposed to be timeless, or something like that? Maybe the word you're looking for is fashion.
http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html
to be a worthwhile resource, particularly owing to its being based on research.