Amid all the hype about Web 2.0 technologies and trends, many experts feel that human perception, the way we gather and process information, has literally been changed by use of the web, and web design must adapt by providing a more active user experience, more opportunity for user participation, even a shift of image-to-text proportion. Dr. Jakob Nielsen, known as the “guru of usability,” would be a dissenting voice in that mix.
A look at his own site, useit.com, is all that’s needed to see Dr. Nielsen’s design philosophy. He has long been a defender of the “content is king” philosophy, rejecting use of images or bells and whistles in favor of clean, content-focused design back in the original dot-com boom. Now Nielsen is speaking out again to stir the pot and assert that new trends such as social networking, user-generated content, and sites architected on user-participation still need to adhere to his principles of content-only design.
In an interview on BBC news, Nielsen lamented design agencies neglect of what he calls the “primary” areas of good design, because they are focused on slick presentation and the enabling of user-participation for timeliness’s sake. One example he cites is the roster of personalization tools provided on many sites to invite users to make the space their own. He points out that research suggests on most sites only 1% of users are regular site participators or contributors of content, with roughly 9% of users occasionally contributing, and the rest never contributing at all, simply visiting the site to get information as quickly as possible: “Get in, get it, and get out.”
On the one hand, sites that are entirely focused on social networking, such as MySpace, clearly are getting away with being visually chaotic while catering to users’ own content, participation, and personalization options. But as more and more commercially-oriented sites add these components, Nielsen urges them not to discard basic design principles, nor discount an audience older than 20, whom he feels are unlikely to spend nearly as much time on the web. With this in mind, easy searchability, text more focused on clear information than on branding or jargon, images used to support a message, and reliance on rigorous usability testing are still the most important principles for web design. “They should get the basics right first,” Nielsen said. “Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right.”
Well, nothing wrong with being reminded of the importance of usability, but before you run off to strip “extraneous” design elements off your site, consider whether Nielsen’s own site even lives up to the standards he espouses. As designer and instructor David Witt points out, Nielsen’s site has a poor aesthetic relationship between colors, and “no visual hierarchy of information, only two long columns of text and links.” If someone went to Nielsen’s site to “get in, get it, and get out,” they might immediately be deterred by the hard-to-read design. Nielsen’s own call for putting usability first would be better interpreted by someone who doesn’t set that tenet up in false conflict against good design.
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I think design and the visual reference of a brand or site is of the utmost importance – I won’t have any reference of that useit.com site stored in my memory – Jakob Neilsons site just looks crap! – 1998 style, the new generation of interent users would agree i’m sure – content is key, but there has to be relationship between content, good clean code (XHTML, CSS) and graphic design – thats what I think this phase web 2.0 is about.
I regularly read Nielsen’s tips on his website, but I have to resize my browser window to shrink the column width just to be able to read the content. CSS has evolved way beyond the days of Mosaic 1.0 and good typography and design are practical and necessary today. I’d be curious to see someone in the usability space do some usability testing on useit.com and see how it performs. I’d bet the results would be less than ideal.
I would have to agree with the comments above. I used to think that Nielsen’s site was a wonderful, crowning achievement in minimalistic site design; but after having seen many of the clean but stylish designs on http://www.zengarden.com, I would have to vote against Nielsen’s approach. Having a “usable” site does not mean that the design principles are solid. Nielsen is so sky-high on himself that he seems to have forgotten what the rest of the world is doing (have a look at the “high-resolution photos” on his bio page to see what I mean – http://www.useit.com/jakob/).
Agreed, his use of type is so unreadable as to seem unkind, especially given how much control we can have over type on the Web today. He seems to give no thought to the ancient science of choosing and laying out type in ways that help the human eye read. And Jeff, as for his many, many hi-res photos, it seems for the purpose of promoting his own photo he is willing to disregard his own caveat against making the user scroll:)
Regarding http://www.zengarden.com, Tara MacKay just put up a great post about it this week.
I despise the cluttered mess of myspace but Nielsen is not much better. What a joke. I can’t decide whether looking at his page makes me want to vomit or pretend I am 12 years old again and it’s 1995.
I think Sessions holds it down extremely well when considering design and nice, clean usability. You guys really cram a lot of info into a small amount of space while simultaneously making it easy to navigate. And pretty!
Sam, on behalf of our creative director, Patricio Sarzosa, I thank you so much for the compliment! That means a lot. I tell you, it aint easy finding a way to organize and deliver a lot of information on a page smoothly, but nor do you want to waste a viewer’s time with unnecessary clicks to get to the information. For this blog, we use WordPress, which makes it very easy to manage our design.
As for MySpace, I do marvel at its visual tawdriness, and at the same time, its overwhelming success. What do you think of Facebook?