When it comes to web design I find a lot of people like to start with the sexy part — the graphic design — and then either ignore the site’s underlying structure, create it as they go along or (more rarely) back into it after they realize the design’s turned into a mess because they don’t understand the fundamental “what’s” and “why’s” of the site.
These books should help with that; they’ll help you get an understanding of how to create a good bedrock for your site before the first sketch is drawn or the first line of code is written … and how to make sure your site is as effective as it should be once you create it. All of these books are available in Lafayette’s Skillman Library.
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
- Author: Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld
- ISBN-13: 978-0596527341
- Publisher: O’Reilly
This provides a broad overview of information architecture: what it is, important concepts, etc. Good for understanding what goes into building the behind-the-scenes parts of a web site.
- Author: Steve Krug
- Publisher: New Riders Press
- ISBN-13: 978-0321344755
This is a guide to quick-and-easy usability testing. He gets into what works and doesn’t work on a site, and how to do basic usability testing on your site to identify problem areas. It’s designed to be read in the time it takes to fly from LA to New York, so it’s a fast read.
- Author: Jeffrey Zeldman
- Publisher: New Riders
- ISBN-13: 978-0321616951
A more technical book that talks about designing web sites based on web standards (rather than hacks and short-cuts that will inevitably break).