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Infamous villain: Jakob Nielsen
(impersonating a scientist)

[pic source]

For a short time the UseIt.com homepage included this bit of hubris (now re-concealed):

Products and Services

Website usability review: $30,000
Keynote speeches: $25,000
1-day usability seminar: $35,000
3-day usability workshop: $70,000

Wired News, 15Nov 2000 (JN on JN): "A guru is a super-expert who defines the field and sets the next direction" [cite]

Almost my only specific gripe with Nielsen's message (as opposed to his method and his style) is his personal responsibility for the prevalence of short pages on the Web.

Here's pretty much the lone acknowledgement of his methodological error:

"In early studies, I found that only 10% of Web users would scroll a navigation page to see any links that were not visible in the initial display. The vast majority of users would make their selection from those links they could see without scrolling. In retrospect, I believe this was due to people treating a set of Web options like they would treat a dialog box..." [cite]

He's started fudging by saying 'navigation' page but he never defines that:

JN waffles my direct (anonymous) Slashdot-interview question about when long pages are okay: [long Slashdot thread]

and in practice he still condemns long informational pages:

Transcript of JN critiquing someone's non-navigation homepage: "...this is one of those long, scrolling webpages, I mean I'm just scrolling through it's like it really goes on forever and ever and even more ever..."

(the poor author took JN's advice and broke his page up into several pages, guaranteeing a severe decline in readership-- how much less likely are visitors to follow a second link than scroll to the bottom?)

Overview of pagelength issues

My poll about what people really want.

Ubersavant Philip Greenspun's take

Nielsen has never used his website to test his theories (trying variants and polling users, for example)-- he obviously considers his design optimal, based on (ancient) lab experiments.

He shows almost no awareness of any one else's thinking, except his now-partners like Norman and Tog.

Let some air out of this ego!!!!

Shamelessly cites Jesse Berst's smartest person on the Web comment

He has a sort of weblog but uses it only to brag about occasions when he feels his theories have been confirmed.

Flash lampoon; drinking game

1958? born Denmark

1973: first computer: a Gier, with punch tape and 4 kilobytes of memory. "I used it in 1973. It was originally launched in 1961. At that time, it was not used for commercial purposes, which is why high school kids got it."

early influences: Ted Nelson's "Literary Machines" and "Computer Lib"

Combined bachelor's and master's program in computer science at Aarhus University in Denmark

1984: encounters hypertext

1985: encounters Internet

1986-90: ass't professor, Technical University of Denmark ("got tired of teaching the same class")

1986: bought Mac Plus for Ph.D. thesis; also HyperCard

early papers: [more] (scroll down: page offers no #-anchors, sorry)

1985: "Learning difficulties of programmers faced with a new programming environment"
1986 "Online documentation and reader annotation"
1987: "Using scenarios to develop user friendly videotex systems"

1988: Ph.D. (computer science, specialization in user interface design) Technical University of Denmark (Copenhagen)

1990-94: Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) "number one place in the world at the time in the user interface field... not that aggressive at moving into the intranets"

1991: encounters WWW (CERN line-mode)

1994: invents spam as a way to notify the world of his new job

1994-98: Sun

1995: starts biweekly AlertBox [archives]

1998-present: Nielsen-Norman Group

IBM User Interface Institute

Board seats: Medicine Now, Searchbutton

Advisory board of Epinions.com [his profile and reviews] and Google [cite]

49 patents since 1997 (and counting) [details] (scroll down: page offers no #-anchors, sorry)

including:
"Tooltips on webpages"
"Method and apparatus for allowing a user to select from a set of mutually exclusive options"

Home: Atherton, California [map]

Married, no children

Interests: Science fiction, travel, good food

Loves the NY Times, the Economist

Hardware (Feb2000): 400 MHz Compaq Pentium w/56k modem and $2500 1600-by-1024 flat monitor [his review]; Sharp Actius 150 laptop [his review]; Mercedes-Benz E420 car phone

Sources: his own page, Sun, NN Group, Ind Stand, SFGate, ePinions

Interviews: Stockholm; Adobe, TechWeb

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Examples: Mitch Glazier (recording industry sleazebag-lawyer); PBS's John McLaughlin

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