Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience

Physical products, from consumer electronics to cars, are needlessly complex because they're developed by insular companies that continue to ignore the growing usability trend.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Centered Design

Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time)

Judging from the email I receive, the most controversial statement I have made in my Alertbox columns so far was to make 'the use of frames' one of the mistakes in my list of top ten mistakes in Web design. For new or inexperienced Web designers, I stand by my original recommendation. Frames: Just Say No.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Articles>Usability>Web Design

Why Mobile Phones are Annoying

Bystanders rated mobile-phone conversations as dramatically more noticeable, intrusive, and annoying than conversations conducted face-to-face. While volume was an issue, hearing only half a discussion also seemed to up the irritation factor.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>User Interface>Usability>Voice

Why You Only Need to Test With Five Users

Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2000). Articles>Usability>Testing>Methods

Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule?

Text-only advertisements work far better than banners, but is this only due to their novelty? Search engine text ads will retain their superiority over time, but text ads on other sites will work only if they focus on directly meeting users' needs.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Design>Web Design>Marketing>Usability

Write Articles, Not Blog Postings

To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.

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

Writing Style for Print vs. Web

Linear vs. non-linear. Author-driven vs. reader-driven. Storytelling vs. ruthless pursuit of actionable content. Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive data. Sentences vs. fragments.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Usability

Zipf Curves and Website Popularity

Much available data suggests that Web use follows a Zipf distribution. The figure shows the distribution of incoming page requests to www.sun.com during a one-month period last year. Each datapoint represents one page, with the x-axis showing pages sorted according to popularity: the first page is the most popular one (the home page), the second page is the one that received second-most requests that month, and so on until we reach page number 10,000 which was only requested a single time that month.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

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>Accessibility>Children

Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children

Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Children

Intranet Portals: The Corporate Information Infrastructure

Over the last half year, it has become popular for large and medium sized companies to build portals to their intranets which have been spinning out of control for years. Still, many companies don't even have a single default starting page for all of their employees: some leave browsers set to boot with the browser vendor's page (an utter waste of bandwidth and time) and others have a smattering of department pages but no company-wide internal home page.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1999). Articles>Web Design>Intranets

Productivity in the Service Economy

Yes, it is possible for white-collar workers to work smarter and become more productive. While intranet usability provides substantial initial gains, workflow usability can go much further and will save millions of jobs.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Workflow

The Difference Between Intranet and Internet Design

Your intranet and your public website on the open Internet are two different information spaces and should have two different user interface designs. It is tempting to try to save design resources by reusing a single design, but it is a bad idea to do so because the two types of site differ along several dimensions.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>Intranets

Reading on the Web

People rarely read web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In a study John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen found that 79 percent of test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>Typography>Usability

Acting on User Research

User research offers a learning opportunity that can help you build an understanding of user behavior, but you must resolve discrepancies between research findings and your own beliefs.

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

Hyped Web Stories Are Irrelevant

The fads and big deals that get the press coverage are not important for running a workhorse website. To serve your customers, it's far better to emphasize simplicity and quality than to chase buzzwords.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Minimalism

American English vs. British English for Web Content

Users pay attention to details in a site's writing style, and they'll notice if you use the wrong variant of the English language.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Usability>Writing>International

Interaction Elasticity

Usage goes down as interaction costs increase. User motivation determines how fast demand drops, following an elasticity curve.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Usability>User Interface>Interaction Design

Agile Development Projects and Usability

Agile methods aim to overcome usability barriers in traditional development, but pose new threats to user experience quality. By modifying Agile approaches, however, many companies have realized the benefits without the pain.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Project Management>Usability>Agile

Aspects of Design Quality

Usability scores for 51 websites show some correlation between navigation, content, and feature quality, but no connections to other usability areas.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Case Studies

Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages

Automated email can improve customer service, strengthen relationships, and help websites bypass search engines. But most messages fared poorly in user testing and didn't fulfill this potential.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Email

When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods

Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>User Experience>Usability>Methods

About Us Information on Websites

We found a 9% improvement in the usability of About Us information on websites over the past 5 years. But companies and organizations still can't explain what they do in one paragraph.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Writing

Store Finders and Locators

Finding addresses and location information on company websites has gotten dramatically easier, but users increasingly turn to search engines first for this task.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Geography

Site Map Usability

New user testing of site maps shows that they are still useful as a secondary navigation aide, and that they're much easier to use than they were during our research 7 years ago.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Sitemaps