Educational Technology Blog

10 Years of Web Usability

January 28th, 2010

I have been re-reading Jakob Nielsen’s excellent book ‘Designing Web Usability‘  published in 2000 with a view to using some of his ideas in a course on Creating and Publishing Digital Media. It is interesting to note what has changed (or not)  in ten years.  The guidelines in those chapters which focus on technique rather than technology  are still relevant and many  have become accepted practice. The  chapter on ‘Content Design’  opens with

“Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop”.

Just because you think it  looks good does not mean users will like it – or even be able to use it.  Something designers still sometimes forget today.

His eye tracking studies have shown how users scan web pages for relevant content.  So, text should be in short paragraphs, each dealing with one subject. Conclusions should be at the beginning. Headings should be concise.   This style of writing also helps users to locate content with a search engine.  All still  relevant and true.

Chapter 8 on Future Predictions was hard to resist. Predicting the enormous expansion of the web and the increase in bandwidth was (I think) fairly obvious.  Less obvious in 2000, he predicted the rise of the web as a personalised, publishing and communication tool – foreseeing the rise of web 2.0.   Interestingly,  he predicted the death of browsers or rather their integration with desktop display and navigation.  History and ‘Recent Documents’ would be combined as would Bookmarks and the ‘Start Menu’. Looking at my Windows XP desktop, this still seems like a good idea!

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox email newsletter keeps readers up to date with his latest thinking on usability and is as ever well worth the read.

Entry Filed under: usability