#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
#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
#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
