Year's 10 Best Application User Interfaces

Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.

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

Error Message Guidelines

Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Help

Ten Best Intranets of 2009

Intranets are getting more strategic, with increased collaboration support. Team size is growing by 12% per year, and platforms are becoming integrated. Improving usability increased use by 106% on average.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Usability

World's Best Headlines: BBC News

Precise communication in a handful of words? The editors at BBC News achieve it every day, offering remarkable headline usability.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Case Studies

Information Architecture Task Failures Remain Costly

Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Assessment

First Two Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye

Testing how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Usability

Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities

User research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Case Studies

Mega Drop-Down Navigation Menus Work Well

Given that regular drop-down menus are rife with usability problems, it takes a lot for me to recommend a new form of drop-down. But, as our testing videos show, mega drop-downs overcome the downsides of regular drop-downs. Thus, I can recommend one while warning against the other.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Usability

Kindle Content Design

Writing for Kindle is like writing for print, the Web, and mobile devices combined; optimal usability means optimizing content for each platform's special characteristics.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Document Design>Usability>Online

Write for Reuse

Users often see online content out of context and read it with different goals than you envisioned. While you can't predict all such goals, you can plan for multiple uses of your text.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Content Management>Writing>Information Design

Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998

Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Wireless Web>Usability

Public Relations on Websites: Press Area Usability

As three studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Press Releases

Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations

Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Research

Investor Relations (IR) on Corporate Websites

Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites and need simple summaries of financial data. Both individual and professional investors want the company's own story and investment vision.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Business Communication>Usability

Top-Ten Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes

Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>User Interface

Stop Password Masking

Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Security>Usability

Building Respect for Usability Expertise

Enemies of usability claim that because "the experts disagree," they can safely ignore user advocates' expertise and run with whatever design they personally prefer.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Usability>Professionalism

Mobile Usability

In user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed "full" sites that weren't designed for mobile.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Wireless Web

Social Networking on Intranets

Community features are spreading from "Web 2.0" to "Enterprise 2.0." Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Social Networking

Twitter Postings: Iterative Design

We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Social Networking

Social Media Outsourcing Can Be Risky

Hosting a company's content and services on 3rd-party social networking sites involves both tactical risks (lower usability) and strategic risks (less user loyalty).

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Outsourcing>Social Networking

Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches

It's easy to bias study participants, whether in user testing or in card sorting, if they focus on matching stimulus words instead of working on the underlying problem.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Card Sorting

Customization of UIs and Products

Websites that let users customize the UI have the same measured usability as regular sites. Sites for customizing products, however, score substantially worse due to complex workflow.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Personalization

Fresh vs. Familiar: How Aggressively to Redesign

Users hate change, so it's usually best to stay with a familiar design and evolve it gradually. In the long run, however, incrementalism eventually destroys cohesiveness, calling for a new UI architecture.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Redesign>Usability

Streams, Walls, and Feeds: Distributing Content Through Social Networks and RSS

Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>Usability