I’m on a bit of user-centric kick at the moment where I am trying to bring everything that I do from a development perspective back to a fundamental understanding of who the user is in the context of the problem I am trying to solve, and what I can do the improve their experience.
There is a wealth of information out there on this topic. One interesting site that I have found is the Usability Professional’s Association. They have a list of resources which are well worth reading through. There are a few there that I do want to point out:
Over the next twelve months I want to continue this journey because I’ve pretty much come to the opinion that the ultimate usability of the system (that is its ability to satisfy the functional, aesthetic and emotional requirements of the user) is paramount and that all our grand architectures behind the user experience are secondary to the actual user experience itself.
I highly recommend the books Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug and Joel Spolsky’s User Interface Design for Programmers as two great and short reads on the topic.
As you point out, a system with the greatest code ever written isn’t much use if nobody can use it.