Good articles on usability?

Question

I'm looking to find any articles/books on usability. I'd like to get a handle on best practices when designing a UI, this can be anything from which user controls are more intuitive to a new user, to how to phrase text that is displayed to the user to avoid confusing dialogs. I mainly do Windows desktop applications, but most usability standards, I assume, would stand true regardless of the platform.

As an example, here's an MSDN article about the Windows User Experience Guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx

Answer 1

Try reading this book: Don't Make Me Think. While it's focused on web usability it is applicable to all facets of UI design.