Usability Ain’t Everything – A Response to Jakob Nielsen’s iPad Usability Study | Hacker News Reader

Usability Ain’t Everything – A Response to Jakob Nielsen’s iPad Usability Study

johnnyholland.org

14 pointsfun2have20 comments

I used to read a lot of Jakob Nielsen's writing, on his website and books. I don't read his work so much now because I find what he says tends to be too conservative. He tends to be too strict with guidelines. For years he insisted that all unvisited hyperlinks should be blue and all visited ones should be purple.

One of the tricks with usability I've found is knowing which rules to stick to, which ones to bend and which ones to break.

I'm still in the "all unvisited hyperlinks should be blue and all visited ones should be purple." camp. It's simple and everyone knows what to expect!

You've managed to use this website though, despite no blue or purple links.

It's true.

I've managed to use Lotus Notes, too, that doesn't mean I think it was a good idea.

I'm not in the 'all links should be a hideous default RGB blue' camp, but we may as well note that the readers of this site are not similar to the target audience of the average website in terms of technological sophistication.

Would be interesting to know why the reply link is the only one underlined on the whole page.

I, for one, would rather that the main article links and comment links were blue/purple. The visuals on here frequently distract me or make certain tasks harder than they should be. "Managing" is not the same as a good experience.

Back on the first version of my site some years ago, I tested blue links versus my design's default (orange, if I recall correctly). Blue won by a mile.

Your mileage may vary. I've also had folks cite usability experts who suggest that changing navigation options is a Very Bad Thing. I do it when folks go to the purchasing page. It is a Very Bad Thing That Pays My Rent And Then Some.

I agree, it's a sensible guideline, but he would be critical of websites that don't follow this guideline.

It's good to be consistent. But lots of sites now have an colour scheme that makes it clear which links are visited and which ones are unvisted. Generally the visited ones are a duller / subdued.

Thankfully, he has research to back up his position. He actually got to his position based on experimental data.

First, I dispute saying that just because it's touch based, the iPad doesn't have a Graphical User Interface.

Second, another kind of device which got a no-holds-barred canvas to create beautiful and stylized interaction-based content was the DVD. The DVD menus for a LOT of titles are seriously crappy.

Even though Nielsen might err on the side of caution, he definitely has a point. People without guidelines have been producing pretty-but-non-functional GUIs before. Let's not keep the traditions alive.

I've always thought the flaw in Jakob Nielsen's thinking was that he was completely focused on standards and almost ignored design.

I much prefer Donald Norman's work.

As a contrast to 'design around standard so that people understand what to do', Norman says 'make things beautiful and playful so people want to use them'.

All standards are learned. What Jakob nielsen misses is that the touch interface is a new paradigme because it removes abstraction from the interaction. You can't judge it on old metrics that themselves in so many ways are wrong and clumbsy.

Jakob nielsen is wrong and have been for a long time. Usability isn't any longer a field to be taken serious in itself. Only when paired with actual design skills does it start to make sense. As a qualifier not as a discipline in itself.

I've said it before. In five years from now usability is nothing more than another tool in the designers box on the line of grid systems typography etc.

When you say "Neilsen is wrong", you really need to back that up. The Neilsen/Norman group conducts empirical studies and has a fair amount of transparency about their work. Most of the "professional" web designers I've worked with tend to favor their design over the user's needs. I would agree that Neilsen advice falls into the conservative design camp more then I appreciate, but at the very least he has actual metrics and user testing to draw his conclusions on. Having been in multiple user testing sessions and seen many a fancy design go down in flames of user confusion, I'll believe that "usability is nothing more then another tool in the designers toolbox" when I see it applied more consistently.

I don't think anybody that knows about Usability Metrics takes "Neilsen" that seriously. Neilson is more popular with the 5 user is enough camp while most people dealing with Ux Metrics believe that you need to be testing with at least 50 to 300 users.

Jakob Nielsen (correct spelling) says that testing on five users is enough to identify serious usability problems that need correction soon.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html

He does NOT say that you should stop testing as soon as you have testing with five users, but rather that you should build usability testing into your development process throughout all of its stages, but especially the early stages.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weekly-usability-tests.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/experienced-users.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/multiple-user-testing.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-testing-showbiz.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quantitative_testing.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050815.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050214.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040719.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030120.html

Ok Nielsen did this test with 7 users

We have moved along way since the simplistic rule of thumb that 5 users is enough. A very good argument in why 10 is not enough is Woolrych and Cockton 2001. They point out an issue in Nielsen formula (1-(1-0.31)^5) in that he does not take into account the visibility of an issue. They show using only 5 users can significantly under count even significant usability issues.

The number of users you need is dependent on how many issues there are, the cultural variance of your user base, and the margin of error you are happy with. Five users or even 10 is not enough on a modern well designed web site.

For example if we assume that designers of a web site have been using good design principles and therefore an issue only effects 2.5% of users. Then 10 users in a test will only discover that issue 22% of the time. If your site attracts a 1 million visitors a year the issue will mean that 25,000 people will experience problems.

The easy way to think of a Usability Test is a treasure hunt. If the treasure is very obvious then you will need fewer people, if less obvious then you will need more people. If you increase the area of the hunt then you will need more people. Most of the advocates of only testing 5 to 10 users, experience comes from one country. Behaviour changes significantly country by country, even in Western Europe. See my blog post here :

It's the normal difference between quantitative and qualitative research. This kind of study is of the exploratory kind, capturing what's going on while the users interact with in this case the iPad for a while.

This study is very useful to use as an UX designer, to see where the potential hazards and weak spots in your design is.

Not really. I am a UX designer I find nothing in Nielsen and his study that by any metrics make one a better designer.

The problem is that his metrics are not applicable to creating successful products.

He is testing on users not on actual customers, there is a world of difference.

You are welcome to show any study that proves that usability testing in general equals better products (i.e. more successful products)

So downvote me all you want. It is a dying field.

If you want a longer answer you I wrote one here http://000fff.org/getting-to-the-customer-why-everything-you....

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