#20869
Tech-Support Tales: Internet Hard to Use for Novice Users
The Internet is still much too difficult to use for novice users. Specialized information appliances like WebTV reduce complexity but still involve considerable risk of user error.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#20828
Technology Transfer of Heuristic Evaluation and Usability Inspection
Participants in a course on usability inspection methods were surveyed 7-8 months after the course to find out what methods they were in fact using, and why they used or did not use the methods they had been taught. The major factor in method usage was the quality of the usability information gained from the method, with a very strong correlation between the rated benefit of using a method and the number of times the method had been used. Even though the respondents came from companies with above-average usability budgets (7% of development budgets were devoted to usability), the cost of using the methods was also a very strong factor in determining use. Other observations were that technology transfer was most successful when methods were taught at the time when people had a specific need for them in their project, and that methods need to have active evangelists to succeed.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1995). Articles>Education>Usability
#23518
Redesigning an intranet for usability often more than doubled the use of these award-winning designs from ten public-sector organizations.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Government
#21006
This year's winning intranet designs emphasized workflow support, self-service content management, and offloading tasks from email to collaboration tools. On average, companies spent three years between redesigns, and one year on the redesign itself.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Usability
#28697
Ten High-Profit Redesign Priorities
Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#20623
The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines
There are ten usability mistakes that about two-thirds of corporate websites make. The prevalence of these errors alone warrants attention, especially since they appear on sites with significant investment in usable design.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#21767
Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution
Better prioritization, fewer interruptions, and concentrated information that's easy to find and manage helps people become more productive and stop wasting their colleagues' time.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#21324
Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution
Better prioritization, fewer interruptions, and concentrated information that's easy to find and manage helps people become more productive and stop wasting their colleagues' time.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Information Design>Web Design
#18594
A collection of ten heuristics applicable to most usability evaluations. Nielsen originally developed the heuristics for heuristic evaluation in collaboration with Rolf Molich in 1990.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Usability>Assessment
#13742
Test your site on actual users. Testing is the heart and soul of usability research. If you want your tests to be accurate, find test subjects who are part of your intended audience--not coworkers, others who have worked on the design, or anyone with a vested interest. Observe them as they use your site. Take notes. Keep your mouth shut. That big blue button may be an obvious link to you but if they don't click it, don't ask them why, at least not until the test is over.
Nielsen, Jakob. Builder.com (2001). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#23113
It's worth remembering the downsides to centralized computing. We must take steps to keep users in control as we grow the power of the network. It's essential that we keep a strong front end to balance out improved back-end features.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>User Interface
#11860
The Three C's of Critical Web Use: Collect, Compare, Choose
Traditionally, critical incident analysis has been a great tool for collecting user feedback about existing user interfaces. To do it, you basically ask the user to recall a prominent case where the interface was uncommonly helpful or particularly disappointing. I usually ask users for both positive and negative examples, and the responses always help me understand how they're using the system and how I can improve it by making certain aspects more or less prominent.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#20815
Three HyperCard Stacks on CD-ROM: A Review
A review of the Macintosh CD-ROM versions of The Manhole, the Time Table of History, and the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog with emphasis on their usability and their support of hypertext navigation. Based on the discussion of these hypertexts the following general principles are found to be useful for analyzing hypertext user interfaces: Navigational dimensions and their explicitness, directionality and literalness, landmarks, locational orientation, history lists, and backtrack mechanisms.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1989). Articles>Usability>Software>Hypertext
#26635
Time Budgets for Usability Sessions
Up to 40% of precious testing time is wasted while users engage in nonessential activities. Far better to focus on watching users perform tasks with the target interface design.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods
#20180
The IT industry is maturing. Hopefully, this maturity will result in a slower introduction of new features, which in turn will let companies focus their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Usability>Programming>Software
#13557
Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability
A company's homepage is its face to the world and the starting point for most user visits. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website's business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is well worth the investment.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability
#18930
Top Ten Mistakes of Web Management
Web design and development involves three levels: web management; interaction design (navigation support, homepage layout, templates, search, etc.); content design (the actual writing on the pages, as well as the design of any other media types used to communicate content as opposed to site interaction). Just as in a hamburger, the middle layer is the most tasty and attracts the most attention, including much of my own work on Web usability. I have come to realize that the outer two layers are more important in many ways: users only care about content (in other words, no, the medium is not the message; the message is the message) and the usability of a website is more a function of how it is managed than of how good its designers are. Content will be the topic of many other columns; here I address some classic mistakes in managing the design of a website.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Interaction Design
#26632
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005
The oldies continue to be goodies -- or rather, baddies -- in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#18459
Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002
Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability
#14931
Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002
Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability
#31916
Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes
Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Usability
#19024
When analyzing numbers related to the growth of a website, I normally recommend looking at them on a logarithmic scale. The reason is that the Web and the Internet both experience exponential growth. Therefore, Web statistics are better analyzed in terms of growth rates than in terms of linear growth.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1998). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Log Analysis
#20868
The amount of traffic referred to a site from other sites seems to follow a Zipf distribution quite closely. The figure shows the distribution of traffic referred to useit.com from other websites during the first three months of 1997. Each dot on the figure represents a URL from which one or more users followed a link to useit.com. Even though the data is not a perfect match with the Zipf curve, it does seem to be the case that the referrals are reasonably close to the Zipf curve. In other words, there are a few other sites that direct a lot of traffic to useit (either because these sites have very high traffic themselves or because they have prominent links to useit). Note that search engines (the blue dots) are strongly represented among these often-referring sites.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Design>Web Design>Hypertext
#27938
The relative popularity of a site's pages, the number of visitors referred by other sites, and the traffic from search queries continue to follow a Zipf distribution.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Log Analysis
#20864
Maybe Web-access through television sets doesn't need to be as usable as a normal computer if it can provide other benefits.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>Usability>Web Browsers
