Dessigning Web Usability

by Jakob Nielsen

Paperback, 2000

Collection

Interaction Design

Status

Available

Call number

005.2

Description

Users experience the usability of a web site before they have committed to using it and before making any purchase decisions. The web is the ultimate environment for empowerment, and he or she who clicks the mouse decides everything. Designing Web Usability is the definitive guide to usability from Jakob Nielsen, the world's leading authority. Over 250,000 Internet professionals around the world have turned to this landmark book, in which Nielsen shares the full weight of his wisdom and experience. From content and page design to designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities, he delivers complete direction on how to connect with any web user, in any situation. Nielsen has arrived at a series of principles that work in support of his findings: 1. That web users want to find what they're after quickly; 2. If they don't know what they're after, they nevertheless want to browse quickly and access information they come across in a logical manner. This book is a must-have for anyone who thinks seriously about the web.… (more)

Genres

Publication

New Riders (2000)

Media reviews

webtechniques

"[T]he book's strengths greatly outnumber its weaknesses. Nielsen has done a great service to the entire Web community by showing why simplicity in design is important, and by clearly explaining how to achieve it."

User reviews

LibraryThing member fbrusca

Jakob Nielsen is the computer industry’s declared “king of usability.” To that I say The King Has No Clothes! If you are a text-centric person, you will really love the Spartan and bare-bones approach philosophized by Dr. Nielsen. However, if you consider yourself someone who is graphically

oriented (probably the vast majority of today’s contemporary computer users), you will find this book a complete waste of time and a major disappointment. In a nutshell, Dr. Nielsen eschews anything graphical and advocates systems designs that are Luddite in nature. His design philosophy is antiquated and completely out of touch with today’s systems. Reading this book I am reminded of the classic Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert and Wally are having lunch with a bitter veteran software developer. “When I started programming,” quips the old school veteran, “we didn’t have any of these sissy icons and windows. All we had were zeros and ones – and sometimes we didn’t even have ones. I once wrote an entire database program using zeros.” I am also filled with the sense that perhaps Nielsen may have flunked Crayola 101 in kindergarten and has been on an anti-graphical rant ever since. If you loved the old days of command line DOS operating systems, blue screens and commands requiring acrobatic keyboard maneuvers (e.g., tap your feet and blink twice while simultaneously pressing CTRL-Left Shift-ALT-F7), by all means grab this book. If you enjoy graphical user interfaces, then you’d better pass on this book.

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LibraryThing member timspalding

Yes, read this, Nielsen's AlertBox material online and Don't Make Me Think. Designing Web Usability is now somewhat dated—some of the blunders it attacks have almost gone—but still seminal. I'd review it worse if it might prompt him to issue a second edition

LibraryThing member muir

From the Guru of usability.

Fewer