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.
With a paper prototype, you can user test early design ideas at an extremely low cost. Doing so lets you fix usability problems before you waste money implementing something that doesn't work.
The key difference between user interfaces for sighted users and blind users is not that between graphics and text; it's the difference between 2-D and 1-D. Optimal usability for users with disabilities requires new approaches and new user interfaces.
Usability improvements can save time-on-task, but critics argue that this is not the same as saving money. Others worry that productivity gains cause unemployment. Neither is correct: usable design saves money and saves jobs.
Compared with a similar 2001 study, a new study of journalists as they looked for information on corporate websites' PR areas showed significant usability improvements: a 5% higher success rate and 15% increased guidelines compliance.
Review of B.J. Fogg's new Persuasive Technology book, which provides useful principles on how to think about creating persuasive design, but rarely gives detailed design guidelines. The exception is a section on enhancing website credibility.
Guidelines conflict on whether to limit intranet search to a single search box or dedicate an additional box to employee directory searches. There's theory to support both guidelines. What's up?
Visual interfaces are inherently superior to auditory interfaces for many tasks. The Star Trek fantasy of speaking to your computer is not the most fruitful path to usable systems.
Easy test user recruiting is crucial to an effective usability process. The average per-user cost is $171, but varies greatly depending on location and the targeted profession.
Development projects should spend 10% of their budget on usability. Following a usability redesign, websites increase desired metrics by 135% on average; intranets improve slightly less.
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.
