This website provides three sources of good usability research. First, we provide a list of journals that contain the results of current usability research, as well as a list of the most commonly attended conferences by usability professionals. These conferences publish their ‘proceedings’, which contain up-to-date research findings. Second, there are a few websites where good usability research is published. Website publishing is done by some researchers in addition to using the more traditional journals and conferences.
Most of the research articles contained in reputable usability journals or in conference proceedings are ‘refereed’. This means that before publishing, the articles are first reviewed by other usability professionals, and then changes are made to the research reports. On the other hand, the majority of research articles shown only (or first) on websites are not reviewed by other usability professionals before being posted on a website. Even so, all of these sources of research information have value for those who are trying to develop excellent user interfaces.
Over the past several years, we have selected what we thought were the best usability research articles, and presented them as a 2 or 3-day course: User Interface Update. Finally, we present a set of usability guidelines that are all based on research, and are being updated as new research is published.