Functionality vs Usability: what to read?

Question

HTML

Hello
The situation is as follows: my colleague writes very good PHP scripts that work great and do not raise any questions from the point of view of functionality.
But as a child, a unicorn gouged out his eyes and completely atrophied his sense of beauty - his scripts look terrible, their appearance and behavior scare away site visitors. The usability and appearance of his scripts got stuck somewhere in the mid-90s and around Internet Explorer 3.
Please advise books or sites that a person should read in order to somehow improve his perception of the world. The level of materials is for very, very beginners.
Thank you.

Answer 1

In general, Jakob Nielsen is an excellent usability specialist and he has good books. Jacob himself is just from those times as your friend, I think they will find a common language in his books)

Answer 2

I think you will not change his perception of the world in any way. But what can really be advised is to separate functionality and presentation. Let him do what he can, write his own mega stuff, and let him attach an external API to them. And then, already other dudes, with a sense of beauty, will make normal interfaces based on his API.

Answer 3

I agree with IonDen, perception cannot be corrected, and yes, it is better to separate the functionality and give the idea for revision to knowledgeable people.
But, if you still want to try to convince, then you can force to use which framework like Twitter Bootstrap, having previously studied the manual, so that the end result at least has some kind of styling.
Well, if English is ok, then you can advise the resource hackdesign.org/lessons

Answer 4

goodui.org is much easier :)