Jakob Nielsen,
a Dane, has long campaigned for better usability on the internet. A ferocious critic of excessive and self-absorbed web design, especially Flash,
and highly critical of designers who see the medium as a mere form of
expression, rather than performing real acts of communication and learning, he offers sage advice on best practice is based on actual user responses (thinking aloun and eyetracking).
Best practice
A key concept for Nielsen is
consistency. Users, he claims, crave for consistency. They expect to learn how
to use a website or piece of online learning, but don’t expect to worry about
the rules changing. The unexpected breaks the user’s confidence in the system
making them feel insecure. This is especially destructive in online learning,
where the cognitive dissonance disrupts the learning experience. In general, what’s important for Nielsen in screen interfaces is:
Easy to learn
Efficiency
Memorability
Low error rate
Satisfaction
This is why it is
important to test, through voiced user trials. Users matter as users are either
your customers or learners. Annoy them or switch them off any you switch off
revenue or learning.
Eyetracking
As readers scan screen text, far more
than they scan written text, Nielsen advises corrective techniques:
subheads
bulleted lists
highlighted keywords
short paragraphs
a simple writing style
de-fluffed
language devoid of marketese
His later three
year, eyetracking trials confirmed how little text people actually read on
websites. Heat maps and gaze plots were used to recommend best practice on page layout, menus, site elements, images and advertising. This was a more objective form of user-watching, and ‘thinking
aloud’ which has remained his primary method of testing for over two decades.
Flash 99% BAD
His famous ‘Flash: 99% Bad’ article characterised
Flash as a usability disease. He does not criticise the tool itself, only its
tendency to work against usability. Flash makes things unusable for three main reasons.
First, it
encourages design abuse through gratuitous
animation. Since we can make things move, why not make things
move? It’s not that animation has no role to play, only that, on the whole, it’s
a distraction. Interestingly, this was backed up in detailed research by Mayer.
Animation takes up useful cognitive attention and distracts from learning
unless it is relevant and purposeful.
Second, it
reduces the granularity of user control, reverting to presentation type
sequences. Flash sequences at the start of websites are among the most
indulgent and annoying feature of the web. This also annoys users and learners
and contributes to users switching off attention.
Third,
non-standard interfaces are introduced and not easy to use by users and
learners who are used to more common conventions. True and disturbing.
These
usability problems are not inherent in Flash and use of this tool has improved
over the years. Indeed, he developed usability guidelines for Flash (that were
mostly ignored). His position remains as follows, “The problem with most Flash is that it’s irrelevant and gets in the
way of users. The download time is only one of the many problems, and even with
instantaneous download, users prefer to visit sites that contain more
straightforward content.
However, much
Flash design continues to encourage these types of abuse. In the end Flash,
like many proprietary tools, has become a cul-de-sac and seems to be on the way
out. It arose because of the weaknesses of HTML, especially in not supporting
video. Then, with Apple declaring war on Flash, and Google getting on board, we’ve gone through a period of black
squares and requests for plug-ins. HTML5 now means that coders do not have to
rely on Adobe’s Flash or Shockwave to achieve results. Mobile has also led to
the abandonment of Flash. Nielsen is not the only one that will not be sorry.
Accessibility
Nielsen’s
study on Disabled Accessibility: The
Pragmatic Approach, showed that accessibility problems should come as no
surprise, ‘After all, countless usability
studies of websites and intranets have documented severe usability problems,
low success rates, and sub-optimal user performance, even when testing users
with no disabilities.’ In general, improving accessibility improves
usability, which in turn improves performance, leading to cost benefits and
savings.
The value of
Jakob Nielsen’s prioritised approach is that he undertook real accessibility
trials of websites with users with several different types of disabilities on a
range of assistive technologies, including a control group. His conclusions
could be said to run against the grain, in that he recommends a pragmatic,
gradual approach to making existing websites (and online learning) accessible. His
advice has largely been ignored by an over-prescriptive approach to
accessibility, whereas most have quietly adopted his pragatic approach.
Criticism
It can be
argued that users also want aesthetic and other effects which enhance their
experience when using screen-based interfaces. His ‘ideal’ websites and home
pages do leave one underwhelmed. So they have a point, especially in learning,
where motivation and sustained attention are important. There are many tribes
in web and online learning design – usability experts. Like Krug, Norman and
Nielsen, learning experts, graphic artists, who treasure their aesthetic and
design judgements, coders and the customer, who often wants to impress their
bosses (and users) with something that looks, well ‘flash’. Most websites and
online learning are therefore compromises.
Yet, his work
remains relevant, especially in pointing to the excesses of elaborate design.
He’s not arguing for ugly content, only usable content. He has no problem with
using readable fonts, especially for longer pieces of text. Few notice that
Arial is the default font in Wikipedia but it is, and with good reason. On the
whole, readers tend to prefer non-serif fonts like Arial, Verdana or Tahoma for
screen text. Nielsen’s point is that, in the end, it’s users that matter and
successful businesses, like Google and Amazon, keep things simple.
Bad internal search
He claims
that the biggest fault in contemporary web design is bad internal search. Poor
headlines and page summaries are another bugbear. He feels that too little of
the budget is spent on this feature. I have to agree. What users enter into
your search box is perhaps the most important data you can gather. It shows
what users, and not designers, really want.
Conclusion
Nielsen is
not afraid to challenge those who see the internet as a medium for designers as
opposed to users. His user-centred research confirms, time and time again, that
real people want simpler, more consistent and less elaborate models and
content. His advice, informed as it is by research, is invaluable for
e-learning and web designers alike. But we should be cautious about seeing
everything solely through the Puritan eyes of the usability expert as there are
other qualities that matter in some contexts. On the whole however, he’s just
plain right.
Bibliography
Nielsen J. (1990) Hypertext
and Hypermedia (1990)
Nielsen J. (1993) Usability
Engineering (1993)
Nielsen J. (1999) Designing
Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
Nielsen J. (2001) Homepage
Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
Nielsen J. (2006) Prioritizing
Web Usability
Nielsen J. (2008) Eyetracking
Web Usability
Nielsen J. (2012) Mobile
Usability
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