Jakob Nielsen responds to responsive mobile criticism

In the article, Dr. Nielsen has this to say about Responsive Design:

> JN: Because I was writing about user experience, not implementation

This is exactly why so many people took issue with Dr. Nielsen's statements: he did speak about implementation.

Some examples, straight from the alert box:

1. "Build a separate mobile-optimized site"

The fact that the mobile-optimized site needs to be separate is clearly about implementation. If the argument was made that there needs to be a separate experience for mobile users, I think nobody would have disagreed, but this is not what it says: it says there need to be two completely distinct sites.

2. "If mobile users arrive at your full site's URL, auto-redirect them to your mobile site"

Again, redirection is an implementation detail. Why does the URL for the mobile-optimized site need to be different from the regular site? Why not serve different content to different users at the same URL? Why not do this using CSS or JavaScript? How is having a separate URL beneficial for the user experience? This is not mentioned.

As it turns out, there are usability issues in having separate URLs for mobile and regular sites. For example, if I email or bookmark a link from my phone and later open it on a desktop computer, I get the wrong site. That's not to say that there is no place for separate mobile sites (especially when the mobile use case is clearly different from the desktop use case), but this an entirely different story.

There is plenty of wisdom in Nielsen's words, but the Mobile Site vs. Full Site is a moot point. The argument should have been "create a separate mobile-optimized experience" instead.

Before listening to anything Jakob Nielsen says about usability, go look at his website: http://www.useit.com/. Can you honestly tell me that the man is a usability expert who has a website designed like that?

EDIT: I've read some of his books and agree with what he says most of the time--I definitely don't write off everything he says. I should have worded my post differently.

About useit.com, it's hard to be completely terrible since there is not a functionality. I would argue that the organization of the links is a little odd, lack of dates on news items is not ideal, and the search bar buried at the very top right of a page that scales 100% is a little hard to notice (design & usability intertwined).

Can you provide a bit more detail to convince me that you understand the difference between visual design and usability?

It's possible to do valuable empirical usability research, develop theories and imterpret data without having an aesthatically pleasing website. Useit.com is not very pretty, nor modern or fashionable – but that's visual design. I don't think it's a bad website from a usability perspective, but even if there are some problems with it, Nielsen has done too much important work to just ignore him.

(I think he is wrong when it comes to this particular issue, I see no reason to generally ignore him, though.)

I agree with this, though it is not a popular opinion. There are many issues with the site. You have to read the entire site to find whatever you are looking for. Under news is listed news, then courses, then more news. While visual design is a different discipline as others have pointed out, this design is so bad that it impairs usability simply by being hard to read. It's just a really bad site, and I think it's fair for the op to put a serious questionmark to Jakob Nielsens authority on the subject, based on it.