Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Jakob’s Ladder

Usability-Guru Jakob Nielsen opened the Online-Information conference in London with his keynote presentation ‘What’s New, What’s Old in Online Usability’.

Jakob gave us the good news; things are getting better on the web from a usability point of view. Since he began researching users’ response to web sites in 1994, the proportion of ‘successful’ encounters has shifted from 40% to 60%. So there are more satisfied users now than are not.

furthermore...

One reason for this improvement, according to Jakob, is that 'designers are not committing so many sins as they used to' and are 'exercising restraint. Web sites are becoming simpler with less emphasis on glamour. Jakob Nielsen's keynote speech was full of useful tips, and one I would like to pass on to all those web site writers of bloated meaningless hype: Call a spade a spade and not an 'excavation solution'.