Human Computer Interaction Articles & Videos

  • Making the Physical Environment Interactive

    Tiny motors and sensors will make physical objects interactive and create a renaissance for gestural user interfaces. As interface design moves from the screen to the material world, the need for simple, easy to use designs will only increase.

  • Top Research Laboratories in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

    A core group of elite corporate research labs (and a few universities) defined the field of human-computer interaction and established much of whatever ease of use we now enjoy. With big labs disappearing, the future of HCI research is in jeopardy.

  • Avoiding Commodity Status

    PCs do not need to be commodities: a focus on quality can differentiate both products and services. Software has great potential for getting better, as shown by an under-appreciated feature in Windows XP that can save users $2,000 per year.

  • PC Forum 2001 Conference Report

    Jakob Nielsen's trip report for Esther Dyson's PC Forum 2001 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  • Stationary Mobility

    Mobile Internet access will free us from having to connect appliances to telephone jacks and will make smart devices much easier to install. In fact, they may not need a user interface at all, as exemplified by the Japanese i-pot.

  • Security & Human Factors

    A big lie of computer security is that security improves as password complexity increases. In reality, users simply write down difficult passwords, leaving the system vulnerable. Security is better increased by designing for how people actually behave.

  • Why Doc Searls Doesn't Sell Any Books

    Changing to a new fulfillment provider caused a website to lose all sales. Reason: lower usability. In the future, reputation managers and web wallets will even the playing field and remove Amazon's temporary advantage as the fulfillment provider of choice.

  • 10 Biggest Thinkers of the 20th Century

    Jakob Nielsen's 1999 list of the ten most important thinkers of the 20th century.

  • 2D is Better Than 3D

    People are not frogs, making it difficult to navigate 3D computer spaces: stick to 2D for most navigation designs. Shun virtual reality gimmicks that distract from users' goals

  • Does Internet = Web ?

    Advanced functionality requires Internet-enabled client-server software with optimized user interfaces that cannot be delivered in a Web browser. Reserve the Web for hypertext and content features.

  • The Java Ring: A Wearable Computer

    The Java Ring, a piece of jewelry with 6 kilobytes of RAM, represented an early step towards computers that integrate into our physical environment.

  • Tech-Support Tales: Internet Hard to Use for Novice Users

    Examples from tech support calls show the immense difficulties novice users have in using the Internet: be prepared if you field apps intended for broad usage.

  • The Need for Speed

    All usability studies show that fast response times are essential for Web usability: let's believe the data for once! Advice for speeding up sites despite the fact that bandwidth is going down, not up.

  • TV Meets the Web

    Comparing the nature of the Web as a medium when accessed through television sets and when accessed through computers, concluding that the level of user engagement is a main differentiator

  • WebTV Usability Review

    Analysis of the usability of WebTV, including user interface guidelines for designing cross-platform Web pages that are considerate of WebTV users

  • The Anti-Mac Interface

    We reverse all of the core design principles behind the Macintosh human interface guidelines to arrive at the characteristics of the Internet desktop.

  • The Death of File Systems

    The file system has been a trusted part of most computers for many years, and will likely continue as such in operating systems for many more. However, several emerging trends in user interfaces indicate that the basic file-system model is inadequate to fully satisfy the needs of new users, despite the flexibility of the underlying code and data structures. Originally published as: Nielsen, J. (1996). The impending demise of file systems. IEEE Software 13, 2 (March).

  • The Internet Desktop

  • Guidelines for Multimedia on the Web

    Multimedia is gaining popularity on the Web with several technologies to support use of animation, video, and audio to supplement the traditional media of text and images. These new media provide more design options but also require design discipline. Unconstrained use of multimedia results in user interfaces that confuse users and make it harder for them to understand the information. Not every webpage needs to bombard the user with the equivalent of Times Square in impressions and movement.

  • How Much Bandwidth is Enough? A Tbps!

    In the long term we will need about a million times more bandwidth than a T1, as shown by the following list of requirements for the perfect user interface.