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Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

useit.com

1–10 of 15 posts

Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#2
"If you're a mainstream business site (including government and non-profit sites), your user experience needs are very different than those of the few hot sites that attract all the attention."

This is a great point... If your audience is mainstream, you need to keep it simple. I worked at a job/employment site recently which was doing some cool-ass AJAX UI for the consumer part of the site. The entire product team LOVED it. Usability tests were a disaster. Users were confused and frustrated. The time saved with AJAX was lost when the user had to actually THINK about what to do on the page.

"For website usability, the problem is not whether a specific operation takes 1 second or 10 seconds; people typically perform each operation only once or twice. The problem for websites is the 5-10 minutes users lose when they do something wrong because the site is too complicated. (After such an experience, they usually leave -- and you lose the business.) Simplicity is more important than efficiency for done-once actions."

Of course, if your audience is geeky, go nuts! :-)

Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#5
post #4

I hate his excessive use of bold. It's like he's encouraging skimming and he doesn't even want people to read carefully. I always feel like a chump when my eyes wander.

No, he KNOWS people skim and he puts the bold in to acknowledge it. All of Jakob Nielsen's recommendations are based on testing and measuring those changes that increase client ROI. That's how he defines "useable". He'd rather you skim the bolded parts of the article than just hit the back button because it looked like too much reading.

Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#6
post #4

I hate his excessive use of bold. It's like he's encouraging skimming and he doesn't even want people to read carefully. I always feel like a chump when my eyes wander.

No, he KNOWS people skim and he puts the bold in to acknowledge it. All of Jakob Nielsen's recommendations are based on testing and measuring those changes that increase client ROI. That's how he defines "useable". He'd rather you skim the bolded parts of the article than just hit the back button because it looked like too much reading.

Yes I know people skim, but he makes it worse and actively deters from reading by doing it.

Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#7
post #4

I hate his excessive use of bold. It's like he's encouraging skimming and he doesn't even want people to read carefully. I always feel like a chump when my eyes wander.

I was going to say that his site seems surprisingly badly designed for a usability expert. The jittery typography makes it exhausting to read. And yet maybe it does appeal to some people. Or rather, work on them. There may be a reason all those sites with PROVEN techniques for generating a six figure income all look so similar.

http://www.leemarketinggroup.com/page/page/5189275.htm

Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#8
post #7
post #4

I hate his excessive use of bold. It's like he's encouraging skimming and he doesn't even want people to read carefully. I always feel like a chump when my eyes wander.

I was going to say that his site seems surprisingly badly designed for a usability expert. The jittery typography makes it exhausting to read. And yet maybe it does appeal to some people. Or rather, work on them. There may be a reason all those sites with PROVEN techniques for generating a six figure income all look so similar. http://www.leemarketinggroup.com/page/page/5189275.htm

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Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#9
post #7
post #4

I hate his excessive use of bold. It's like he's encouraging skimming and he doesn't even want people to read carefully. I always feel like a chump when my eyes wander.

I was going to say that his site seems surprisingly badly designed for a usability expert. The jittery typography makes it exhausting to read. And yet maybe it does appeal to some people. Or rather, work on them. There may be a reason all those sites with PROVEN techniques for generating a six figure income all look so similar. http://www.leemarketinggroup.com/page/page/5189275.htm

LOL .. Jakob's been around for a while. He actually was a consultant for Google in the early days.

Re: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous...

#10
post #7
post #4

I hate his excessive use of bold. It's like he's encouraging skimming and he doesn't even want people to read carefully. I always feel like a chump when my eyes wander.

I was going to say that his site seems surprisingly badly designed for a usability expert. The jittery typography makes it exhausting to read. And yet maybe it does appeal to some people. Or rather, work on them. There may be a reason all those sites with PROVEN techniques for generating a six figure income all look so similar. http://www.leemarketinggroup.com/page/page/5189275.htm

I love the design of useit.com. To me its one of the best designed websites out there. By far. I hate most websites. I also like Hacker News. So im surprised to see you disliking useit. Jittery typography? What would be better? One giant block of uniform text?

How would you design useit?

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