Jakob Nielsen (usability Consultant)
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Jakob Nielsen (born 5 October 1957) is a Danish
web usability Web usability of a website consists of broad goals of usability, presentation of information, choices made in a clear and concise way, a lack of ambiguity and the placement of important items in appropriate areas as well as ensuring that the cont ...
consultant,
human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is the process through which people operate and engage with computer systems. Research in HCI covers the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and comp ...
researcher, and co-founder of
Nielsen Norman Group The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) is an all-remote American research and design UX (user interface and user experience) firm. They offer training, consulting, research reports, and free articles and research findings to help experience designers ...
. He was named the “guru of Web page usability” in 1998 by
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
and the “king of usability” by Internet Magazine.


Education and early life

Jakob Nielsen was born 5 October 1957 in
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...
,
Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
. He holds a
PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in 1988 in human–computer interaction from the
Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark (), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and it is today ran ...
from DAIMI.


Career and research

Nielsen's affiliations include
Bellcore iconectiv supplies communications providers with network planning and management services. The company’s cloud-based information as a service network and operations management and numbering solutions span trusted communications, digital identi ...
, teaching at the
Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark (), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and it is today ran ...
, and the
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
User Interface Institute at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. From 1994 to 1998, he was a distinguished engineer
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
.


Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)

After his regular articles on his website about usability research attracted media attention, he co-founded usability consulting company
Nielsen Norman Group The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) is an all-remote American research and design UX (user interface and user experience) firm. They offer training, consulting, research reports, and free articles and research findings to help experience designers ...
(NN/g) of
Fremont, California Fremont () is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San F ...
in 1998 with fellow usability expert Donald Norman. The company's vision is to help designers and other companies move toward more human-centered products and internet interactions, as experts and pioneers in the field of
usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...
. Nielsen serves on the editorial board of Morgan Kaufmann Publishers' book series in Interactive Technologies. Nielsen writes a
fortnight A fortnight is a unit of time equal to 14 days (two weeks). The word derives from the Old English term , meaning "" (or "fourteen days", since the Anglo-Saxons counted by nights). Astronomy and tides In astronomy, a ''lunar fortnight'' is hal ...
ly newsletter, ''Alertbox'', on web design matters and has published several books on the subject of
web design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code a ...
. Nielsen founded the usability engineering movement for efficient and affordable improvements of user interfaces and he has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds more than a thousand United States patents, mainly on ways of improving usability for technology. In the early 1990s, Nielsen popularized the principle that five test users per usability test session is enough, allowing numerous tests at various stages of the development process. His argument is that "elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources." Once it is found that a few people are totally confused by a home page, little is gained by watching more people suffer through the same flawed design.;


Jakob's law

Users will anticipate what an experience will be like, based on their mental models of prior experiences on websites. When making changes to a design of a website, try to minimize changes in order to maintain an ease of use.


Nielsen's usability heuristics

Nielsen's list of ten heuristics is probably the most-used usability framework for user interface design. An early version of the heuristics appeared in two papers by Nielsen and Rolf Molich published in 1989-1990. Nielsen published an updated set in 1994, and the final set still in use today was published in 2005: # Visibility of system status # Match between system and the real world # User control and freedom # Consistency and standards # Error prevention # Recognition rather than recall # Flexibility and efficiency of use # Aesthetic and minimalist design # Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors # Help and documentation In his book ''Usability Engineering'' (1993), Nielsen also defined the five quality components of his "Usability Goals": # Learnability # Efficiency # Memorability # Errors (as in low error rate) # Satisfaction


Windows 8 usability

Nielsen has been quoted in the computing and the mainstream press for his criticism of Microsoft's
Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
(2012) user interface. Tom Hobbs, creative director of the design firm Teague, criticized what he perceived to be some of Nielsen's points on the matter, and Nielsen responded with some clarifications. The subsequent short and troubled history of Windows 8, released on 26 October 2012, seems to have confirmed Nielsen's criticism: the sales of Windows-based systems plummeted after the introduction of Windows 8; Microsoft released a new version, Windows 8.1, on 18 October 2013, to fix the numerous problems identified in Windows 8, and later released
Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
, a complete overhaul, in July 2015.


Criticisms

As Nielsen's newsletter and website grew, and with his use of " acronomic
platitude A platitude is a statement that is seen as trite, meaningless, or prosaic, aimed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. The statement may be true, but its meaning has been lost due to its excessive use as a thought-terminating clich ...
s" to describe his concepts, some critics like
Philip Greenspun Philip Greenspun (born September 28, 1963) is an American computer scientist, educator, early Internet entrepreneur, and pilot who was a pioneer in developing online communities like photo.net. Biography Greenspun was born on September 28, 1 ...
argued that Nielsen's work was more about marketing himself than any particular research.


Nielsen's usability heuristics

In 1990, when the Nielsen heuristic evaluation guidelines were created,
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...
was less complicated than it is in present-day. There has never been any research-based validation of Nielsen's heuristics. Researchers at the
University of Calgary {{Infobox university , name = University of Calgary , image = University of Calgary coat of arms without motto scroll.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms , former ...
published an article in 2008, questioning if the Nielsen heuristics were an oversimplification. Nielsen has been criticized by some visual designers and
graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...
s for failing to balance the importance of other
user experience User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, a ...
considerations such as typography, readability, visual cues for hierarchy and importance, and eye appeal.


Responsive design

Nielsen's 2012 guidelines, "''Repurposing vs Optimized Design"'' that web sites made for mobile devices be designed separately from their desktop-oriented counterparts has come under fire from Webmonkey's Scott Gilbertson, as well as Josh Clark writing in .net magazine, and
Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...
's Bruce Lawson, writing in Smashing Magazine, and other technologists and web designers who advocate
responsive web design Responsive web design (RWD) or responsive design is an approach to web design that aims to make web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes from minimum to maximum display size to ensure usability and satisfactio ...
. In an interview with ''.net'' magazine, Nielsen explained that he wrote his guidelines from a usability perspective, not from the viewpoint of implementation. Nielsen has been accused of taking a " puritanical" approach to usability, and not being able to keep up his usability evaluations in step of technological changes.


Books published

Nielsen's published books include: * * * * * * * *


Articles published

Nielsen's published articles include: * * *


Awards and honours

In 2010, Nielsen was listed by ''
Bloomberg Businessweek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'' (and before that ''Business Week'' and ''The Business Week''), is an American monthly business magazine published 12 times a year. The magazine debuted in New York City in Septembe ...
'' among 28 "World's Most Influential Designers". In recognition of Nielsen's contributions to usability studies, in 2013 SIGCHI awarded him the Lifetime Practice Award.


References


External links

*Video
Mobile Usability Futures, Jakob Nielsen, Talks at Google
(2013), by
Google Inc Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, on
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

techhive.com

businessinsider.com\jakob-nielsen-kindle-fire-2011-12

Want Magazine interview
(video, 2010) {{DEFAULTSORT:Nielsen, Jakob 1957 births Living people People from Copenhagen Technical University of Denmark alumni Danish computer scientists Academic staff of the Technical University of Denmark Danish emigrants to the United States American computer scientists IBM employees Sun Microsystems people Human–computer interaction researchers Usability