Jakob Nielsen’s research and writing on web usability
Posted on September 3, 2010
Jakob Nielsen has been writing his bi-weekly Alertbox articles on web usability for a long time. I was just getting started with web design back in 1999 when somebody told me about his website, useit.com. It definitely opened my eyes to some things I had never thought about and I still check out the site about once a month to read or at least skim the latest columns.
When most people see the useit.com site, they immediately say it’s too plain or too ugly. If you read Nielsen’s writing, though, you’ll start to understand why the site looks the way it does. Whether or not it’s true that the site is too plain, it is certainly easy to navigate and effective at what it does, and those are the kinds of things Nielsen advocates for in his writing.
What really sets Jakob Nielsen’s articles apart though is not just his views on keeping things simple, but the fact that his recommendations are based on research. He’s not just throwing around his opinion, he does usability testing and shares what he’s learned from observing how people interact with websites.
Anyway, I’m just posting this here to recommend that anybody who is trying to learn about web design include useit.com in the mix of things you’re reading. Here are a few of my favorite Alertbox columns:
- Writing Style for Print vs. Web
- Hyped Web Stories are Irrelevant
- Tagline Blues: What’s the Site About?
Also, for what it’s worth, Jakob Nielsen’s “ugly” website has a Google PageRank of 8. Other sites that have a PageRank of 8 at the time of this writing are eBay and Digg.
