Nielsen was relevant and aesthetically conventional something like 6 years ago. This was before web designers got the technological capacity to make the sites we enjoy today. Worse, the designers were often infatuated with the kind of aesthetics that was almost completely unreadable (tiny pixelgrid text; low contrast designs; very little "information ink").<p>In that context, useit was a bastion of sanity.<p>Jump back to today's internet and you realize useit hasn't changed at all. Sensible considering his message has only changed evolutionarily instead of at the rapid pace of design sentimentality.<p>Useit is a design achromatism today, but its message is still just as relevant as before.
This is something of an ad hominem. Jakob's site having poor usability does not automatically invalidate his usability arguments.<p>See this article for his own view on the matter:
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/09/guardianweeklytechnologysection.interviews" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/09/guardianwee...</a><p>And then even if we assume that the quality of the site proves anything about Jakob's advice and that the site was intended to be "usable", the observation that the site is unusable for Hank still doesn't prove anything useful.<p>The whole point of most of Jakob's writing is that empirical evidence from watching typical users in your target market actually use your site is what matters. Hank's opinion doesn't matter unless he's (a) one of the users that Jakob is targeting and (b) representative of them. For which we have no data.<p>I am not a fan of Hank's writing.
Just remember, Nielsen focuses on usability <i>investments</i> with positive (often large) ROI. Since NNG charges $40,000-$1,000,000+ for a consultation, you'd rather make MONEY off his recommendations than win beauty pageants.
To me, the article in reference is both unreadable and unscannable, making it basically unusable.<p>- Its default font size is much larger than what my browser is set to. This removes focus on the text's meaning and forces me to recalibrate my mind to its presentation and adjust to that, for better or worse (in this case worse.)<p>- The obsessively large headings make scanning 'stuttery.' (or is my own browser misrepresentative of the bulk of users?) These headings are scarily large when hitting them at reading speed.<p>- All the bold text is in such large quantities thus negating impact.<p>- There is no Table of Contents at top like a Wikipedia article with their jump-to links.<p>- I think one thing his site lacks is a decent menu and space between lines in bulleted lists.<p>He implements many of his own rules on his site and makes a caricature of them in the process. Sometimes you need to step back and say, "It might not be perfect from a rule-abiding sense, but does it work? If not, can we change things ever so slightly so as to create proportionally much larger improvements in usability?"
I'm with Hank here. It's always been quixotically humorous that Jakob preaches on UI, but has a site that really has nothing remarkable or memorable about it.<p>Doesn't though, mean I disagree with his messages.
This whole critique is based on a fallacy: aesthetics and usability are <i>not</i> the same thing!<p>I don't see anything non-functional on the linked site at all. It just uses fonts and colors that aren't currently en vogue among the elite web 2.0 cadres. There aren't any background gradients. The text is white on black (horrors!) and somewhat larger than is fashionable these days (though why that should be a usability problem I don't know). It doesn't artificially restrict the text column to half (or less) of the browser width.<p>The worst thing is that there isn't even a shred of usability evidence anywhere in the post. When the author says that Jakob's site is "unreadable", what he's really saying is that he doesn't want to read it because it doesn't conform to his norms of aesthetics. It's like Picasso refusing to study Da Vinci because clearly he didn't grok cubism.
I reacted the same way the first time I saw the site and found it a bit amusing but as I read on what he said made says so I kept reading.<p>However it is fine from a technical standpoint, it is just not visually appealing.<p>------------<p>"13 comments:<p>Anonymous said...<p><pre><code> Remember, Dr. Phil has a best selling DIET book.
August 12, 2008 7:27 AM"</code></pre>
He uses the term usability to isolate his principles from aesthetics, since historically there have been a lot of flashy, bad web sites. His sparse design helps hammer that point home.<p>For UX as a whole I wouldn't advise anyone to read useit exclusively.
Unreadable? Far from it. The content is displayed clearly and obviously given priority. But it can get a little difficult to dig into his archives.<p>I wouldn't however, call it the worst site I've ever seen.
Thought: If Nielson made any attempt to make it pretty, people would be complaining how everything violates this or that for the next couple of years. By making things deliberately ugly, everyone is left only with "but its ugly!"<p>A clever man that Jakob.
<i>It is as if, while he is handing out the Oscars, he is wearing a plaid polyester suit.</i><p>lol, nice visual<p>I have actually turned down vendors selling CRM software because they didn't follow up with me properly. Kinda ironic, huh?<p>The same thing applies here. The old adage is, "If you don't do the easy stuff well, why should I even listen to you when it comes to the hard stuff?"