Skip to content


Jakob Nielsen and Usability

I am always quoting Jakob Nielsen from the Nielsen Norman Group, and saying to web develoers to follow Jakob’s rules. I guess I just thought everyone knew Jakob Nielsen in the web world. Apparently not because I got a few questions asking me about him. Soooo, here’s some links:
Jakob Nielsen’s main page is Useit.com.
Since 1995 he has been publishing Alertbox, Jakob’s column on Web usability. For example, this week he made confident recommendations abot Screen Resolution and Page Layout (July 31) [Optimize Web pages for 1024×768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800×600 to 1280×1024. According to Nielsen, “60% of all monitors are set at 1024×768 pixels,” and “only about 17% use 800×600.” “Fewer than half a percent of users still have 640×480.”] In past columns he has talked about Traffic Log Patterns (July 10). How Many Users to Test? (June 26), Email Newsletters (June 12) and raged about Flash animations and blinking text. He is always on the side of the user in usability debates. His whole arhcive of AlertBox columns is on the site.
Here’s more about him, Bio, and his Wikipedia entry to meet him.
Here are his Books:
“Prioritizing Web Usability, 2006
Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, 2001 (113 guidelines for homepage design)
Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, 2000: a quarter million copies in print; 22 languages
Usability Engineering, 1994: textbook on the methods needed to make interfaces easier to use
Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond, 1995: second edition of textbook on linked online information
Usability Inspection Methods, 1994 (co-editor with Robert L. Mack): with chapters by each of the inventors of these methods
International User Interfaces, 1996 (co-editor with with Elisa del Galdo)
Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Vol. 5, 1995 (editor)
Hypertext and Hypermedia, 1990: the first edition of classic textbook (no longer in print)
Designing User Interfaces for International Use, 1990 (editor)
Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency, 1989 (editor): still the best book on how to get a standard look-and-feel (reprint edition published 2002)”
If you’re serious about usability you read and debate Nielsen.
Stephen

0 Shares

Posted on: August 2, 2006, 2:52 pm Category: Uncategorized

2 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Nielsen *is* a useful source of information. Just don’t look to his site as an example of good design. You’d think he might accept one of the countless offers he must get from people begging to re-do his site for free (well, for the exposure and publicity). His rationale for the low graphics might have held water in 1997, but it just sounds stupid today.

  2. A study was done (using Nielsen’s criteria)on every public library’s web site in Ohio in 2004. You can check it out at http://www.designforthelittleguy.com/study.pdf