Further reading on design
This is a list of books with more details on design.
User Interface Design for Programmers
Joel Spolsky, APress www.joelonsoftware.com
Very hands-on book with concrete advice. It's brief and to the point. If you only read one book on design, then read this one. The website has short essays on user-interface design (the basis for the book in fact) and a lot more too.
Tog on Software Design
Tognazzini, Addison-Wesley www.asktog.com
Tog was heavily involved in the design of the original Apple Mac and has lots of stories about how they built it. The website is also full of stories and question-and-answer sessions. Tog now works for Don Norman as a design consultant.
Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman, Basic Books
The book that everyone refers to – will explain the "why" of design. If you want to impress other designers, you need to be able to quote stuff out of this book. The only downside is that chapter 1 tells you everything, and then the remaining chapters just repeat the first one.
Designing Visual Interfaces
Mullet and Sano, Prentice-Hall
This book is based on work that the authors did for Sun in the early 90s. They tell you a lot about how to make a visually pleasing user interface. Along the way, they cover typography, colors, icon design, dialog design, and page layout.
Designing from Both Sides of the Screen
Ellen Isaacs & Alan Walendowski, SAMS Publishing
A practical book that talks about how design and programming affect each other. One author is a designer, the other a programmer. They develop a chat application over the course of the book, and each talks about how they did their part.
Boxes and Arrows
This is a website for web designers but has lots of useful general articles on information design (how to structure information). Information design is one of the more important bits of design. Having wonderful graphic design will not help you if the structure of your system is confusing to users.
About Face and The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Alan Cooper, http://www.cooper.com/
Alan Cooper is a designer who invented the VB environment. He has written two books. About Face is all about how to put together a user interface on windows. It goes on at length about the difference between a button and an icon-button, for example. The Inmates are Running the Asylum is a great book to be inspired by, and to give to your boss when he wonders why you aren’t programming yet. It explains why it is a good idea to do user interface design before programming.