Articles

Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a retired principal and co-founder (with Dr. Donald A. Norman) of the Nielsen Norman Group. Jakob established the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and invented the heuristic evaluation method.

Articles and Videos

  • Non-Profit Organization Websites: Increasing Donations and Volunteering

    Giving money on charity websites is 7% more difficult than spending money on ecommerce sites. Donating physical items is even harder. For non-profit websites, social media is secondary; the top priority is to write clearer content.

  • Test-Taking Enhances Learning

    People remember much more after reading if they retrieve information about the text from memory. Quizzes are one way websites can help users remember more.

  • Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design

    The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.

  • Kinect Gestural UI: First Impressions

    Inconsistent gestures, invisible commands, overlooked warnings, awkward dialog confirmations. But fun to play.

  • College Students on the Web

    Students use websites and social media extensively to complete various different tasks. They are multitaskers who appreciate simple, easy-to-use websites and products.

  • E-Mail Newsletters: Increasing Usability

    New research finds improved usability metrics for subscribing to newsletters, but problems with reading them on mobile devices.

  • Mega Menus Gone Wrong

    Big 2-D drop-downs can facilitate site navigation – if they're properly designed. Two examples illustrate some mega menu usability pitfalls.

  • Photos as Web Content

    Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to "jazz up" web pages.

  • Alphabetical Sorting Must (Mostly) Die

    Ordinal sequences, logical structuring, time lines, or prioritization by importance or frequency are usually better than A-Z listings for presenting options to users.

  • Should You Copy a Famous Site's Design?

    Although successful websites typically have high usability, average sites can hurt their business by copying design elements that don't work well in other contexts.