Seductive User Interfaces

Traditionally, human-factors specialists have had a rather severe attitude toward human performance with computers: their goal was maximum throughput, often measured in transactions per minute. This attitude was justified when computers were mainly work-related; in some cases it still proves wise. For example, a usability improvement that shaves one second off the time it takes a directory-assistance operator to search a database for a telephone number saves several million dollars per year in the U.S. alone. This performance-obsessed approach to usability led many early user interface experts to condemn the popular term 'user friendly' with the argument that users didn't need "friendly" computers, they needed efficient designs that let them complete their tasks faster.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Articles>User Interface>Usability

Severity Ratings for Usability Problems

Severity ratings can be used to allocate the most resources to fix the most serious problems and can also provide a rough estimate of the need for additional usability efforts. If the severity ratings indicate that several disastrous usability problems remain in an interface, it will probably be unadvisable to release it. But one might decide to go ahead with the release of a system with several usability problems if they are all judged as being cosmetic in nature.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Design>Usability>Methods

Should Designers and Developers Do Usability?

Having a specialized usability person is best, but smaller design teams can still benefit when designers do their own user testing and other usability work.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>Professionalism>Usability

Show Prices for Common Scenarios

B2B sites often have overly complex pricing structures or can't show prices at all. To help prospects with early research, list representative cases and their prices.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Site Map Usability

One of the oldest hypertext usability principles is to visualize the structure of the information space to help users understand where they can go. On today's Web, site maps are a common approach to facilitating navigation. Unfortunately, they are often not very successful at it. We conducted a usability study of site maps on 10 websites, and our main conclusion is that users are reluctant to use site maps and sometimes have problems even finding them. Considering that site maps could be particularly useful to people who are lost, it is not good news that they are often hard to find.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Sitemaps

Situate Follow-Ups in Context

Make new or follow-up information easily accessible from the location of the original information or transaction.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability

Intranet Information Architecture (IA)

In analyzing 56 intranets, we found many common top-level categories, labels, and navigation designs, but ultimately, the diversity was too great to recommend a single IA.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Intranets

The Slow Tail: Time Lag Between Visiting and Buying

Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than four weeks after users click on search engine ads.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Web Design>E Commerce>Usability

Stationary Mobility

One of the mobile Internet's greatest benefits may well come from devices that rarely move at all. Once cellular Internet connectivity becomes ubiquitous and cheap, many devices will connect to the net without wires. Take it out of the box and feed it power, and it is connected. Mobile Internet access will free us from having to connect appliances to telephone jacks and will make smart devices much easier to install. In fact, they may not need a user interface at all, as exemplified by the Japanese i-pot.

Nielsen, Jakob and Marie Tahir. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Usability>Wireless Web

Statistics for Traffic Referred by Search Engines and Navigation Directories to Useit

The following table shows the number of visits that have been recorded in the Useit server logs as coming from search engines and directory services (so-called 'portals') in a one-month period (March) in each of the years from 1998 through 2003.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Statistics>Log Analysis

Success Rate: The Simplest Usability Metric

In addition to being expensive, collecting usability metrics interferes with the goal of gathering qualitative insights to drive design decisions. As a compromise, you can measure users' ability to complete tasks. Success rates are easy to understand and represent usability's bottom line.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Usability>Assessment

Supporting Multiple-Location Users

About half of the users now access the Internet from more than one location. Despite the implications of this for service design, many systems assume that users remain bound to a single computer.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Tagline Blues: What's the Site About?

A website's tagline must explain what the company does and what makes it unique among competitors. Two questions can help you assess your own tagline: Would it work just as well for competitors? Would any company ever claim the opposite?

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online

Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Video

Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online

Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Eye Tracking

Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength

E-newsletters that are informative, convenient, and timely are often preferred over other media. However, a new study found that only 11% of newsletters were read thoroughly, so layout and content scannability are paramount.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>Mailing Lists>Email

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

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

Ten Best Government Intranets

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

Ten Best Intranets of 2003

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

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

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

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

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

Ten Usability Heuristics

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