#31911
Twenty-Five Years in Usability
Since I started in 1983, the usability field has grown by 5,000%. It's a wonderful job — and still a promising career choice for new people.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Careers>Usability>History
#20829
Two Basic Hypertext Presentation Models
The hypertext world has classically distinguished between two fundamentally different ways of presenting hypertext nodes on the screen: scrolling and cards. Throughout the history of hypertext, designers of hypertext systems have argued about the relative merits of these two contrasting approaches. The proponents of the scrolling model are sometimes called the holy scrollers and the proponents of the card model are called the card sharks. Here are examples of documents I have authored myself in these two models, using pre-WWW hypertext systems.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1995). Articles>Information Design>Hypertext
#20622
Two Sigma: Usability and Six Sigma Quality Assurance
On average across many test tasks, users fail 35% of the time when using websites. This is 100,000 times worse than six sigma's requirement, but Web usability can still benefit from a six sigma quality approach.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#25086
Undoing the Industrial Revolution
The last 200 years have driven centralization and changed the human experience in ways that conflict with evolution. The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Information Design>History
#21007
What is usability? How, when, and where can you improve it? Why should you care? This overview answers these basic questions.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Usability
#10256
Web users are getting more impatient every year: reduced desire to learn new interaction techniques, less ready to download plug-ins, and unwilling to tolerate slow downloads. If a site doesn't provide immediate gratification, they leave. Impatient users imply increasing difficulties in launching new websites, since the users will not bother with anything that requires additional learning time. Usability becomes a barrier to entry: a new site will fail unless users can grasp it in a few seconds.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1999). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#28258
How can a small company's website benefit from usability activities despite a minuscule budget? By integrating four simple and effective usability practices into the design process.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods
#19760
How can a small company's website benefit from usability activities despite a minuscule budget? By integrating four simple and effective usability practices into the design process.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Usability
#13558
The Internet enriches many seniors' lives, but most websites violate usability guidelines, making the sites difficult for seniors to use. Current websites are twice as hard to use for seniors than for non-seniors.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability
#26614
The biggest problem facing the usability field is how to scale up massively so that we can impact all the user interface designs in the world. How big is this challenge? As of November 2005, there are about 75 million websites on the Internet. There are also about 30 million intranets inside corporate firewalls. Thus, there are more than 100 million user interface designs, just in the online space.
Nielsen, Jakob. Journal of Usability Studies (2005). Articles>Usability>International
#28463
Usability in the Movies: Top 10 Bloopers
User interfaces in film are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Usability
#20820
Usability Laboratories: A 1994 Survey
This article provides a table with summary statistics for the thirteen usability laboratories described in the papers in this special issue. It also gives an introduction to the main uses of usability laboratories in usability engineering and surveys some of the issues related to practical use of user testing and CAUSE tools for computer-aided usability engineering.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Usability>Research
#11863
Although measuring usability can cost four times as much as conducting qualitative studies (which often generate better insight), metrics are sometimes worth the expense. Among other things, metrics can help managers track design progress and support decisions about when to release a product.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Usability
#25195
Usability of Websites for Teenagers
When using websites, teenagers have a lower success rate than adults and they're also easily bored. To work for teens, websites must be simple -- but not childish -- and supply plenty of interactive features.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#11909
Usability On The Web Isn't A Luxury
On the Internet, it's survival of the easiest: If customers can't find a product, they can't buy it. It's cheaper to increase the design budget than the ad budget, and attention to usability can increase the percentage of Web-site visitors who complete a purchase.
Nielsen, Jakob and Donald A. Norman. Information Week (2000). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#26642
Usability: Empiricism or Ideology?
Usability's job is to research user behavior and find out what works. Usability should also defend users' rights and fight for simplicity. Both aspects have their place, and it's important to recognize the difference.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Usability>Professionalism
#23767
The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups
Focus groups often bring out users' spontaneous reactions and ideas and let you observe some group dynamics and organizational issues. You can also ask people to discuss how they perform activities that span many days or weeks: something that is expensive to observe directly. However, they can only assess what customers say they do and not the way customers actually operate the product. Since there are often major differences between what people say and what they do, direct observation of one user at a time always needs to be done to supplement focus groups.
Nielsen, Jakob. Useit (1997). Articles>Usability>Methods>Focus Groups
#28048
Use Old Words When Writing for Findability
Familiar words spring to mind when users create their search queries. If your writing favors made-up terms over legacy words, users won't find your site.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Search
#23768
Proper usability design commonly cuts training costs by 50 percent and increases productivity by 25 percent.
Nielsen, Jakob and Kara Pernice Coyne. CIO Magazine (2001). Articles>Project Management>Usability
#10015
Jakob Nielsen's useit.com website publishes material about the emerging field of 'information design': articles, essays and links to resources for usable online interfaces.
#25235
User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems
Internet scams cannot be thwarted by placing the burden on users to defend themselves at all times. Beleaguered users need protection, and the technology must change to provide this.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>Security
#13614
User Empowerment and the Fun Factor
Designs that engage and empower users increase their enjoyment and encourage them to explore websites in-depth. Once we achieve ease of use, we'll need additional usability methods to further strengthen joy of use.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>User Interface>Usability
#21013
User Payments: Predictions for 2001 Revisited
Advertising-supported websites will soon be a thing of the past. As I predicted a year ago, sites began charging for services in 2001. Although most sites are still not handling payments right, two innovative European projects hold much hope for 2002.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Web Design>Marketing
#30827
User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly
Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design
#28092
User Testing is Not Entertainment
Don't run your studies for the benefit of the people in the observation room. Test to discover the truth about the design, even when user tasks are boring to watch.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Usability>Testing
