Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:  
Summary: Useful, but I struggled with the delivery of the material...
Comment: This is one of those book reviews where I have to separate content from my biases on the presentation of that content... Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger. Let me elaborate...
Contents: Introduction - Nothing To Hide; The Web User Experience; Revisiting Early Web Usability Findings; Prioritizing Your Usability Problems; Search; Navigation and Information Architecture; Typography - Readability & Legibility; Writing for the Web; Providing Good Product Information; Presenting Page Elements; Balancing Technology with People's Needs; Final Thoughts - Design That Works; Index
I acknowledge that Nielsen is an industry expert in web usability. He has done extensive usability studies with web sites to capture what works and what doesn't when it comes to web design. His book Designing Web Usability is often cited as the bible of what should and shouldn't be done on your site. In Prioritizing, the authors take a look at the past to see if there's been any improvement on the killer sins of web design as covered in Designing. They update the ranking of the most heinous examples of "features", and then cover what items should be addressed first when it comes to fixing your site. There's no way to make a perfect site, and you can use this information to focus on getting the biggest payback on your efforts.
Where I have a problem is with the "attitude" that I perceived in the material. Designing was one of the first web design books I read, and it really put me off of those types of books. The expert says "I don't like this", therefore no one should do that. If something loads in more than 1.52 seconds, it's bad. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's the sense I got from reading the book. Prioritizing is a bit better, but I still had the feeling that Neilsen's preferences and nitpicking were being held up as "best practices", just because he says so. Yes, I know there is an abundance of research behind his numbers, but going on about how 17% do this and 19% do that got to be a bit much at times. And when I ran across a couple of pages that had a number of typos scattered throughout, I couldn't help but chuckle...
Yes, this is good information to read and know. We all know that many sites leave much to be desired when it comes to actual usage. But I would have had an easier time being open to it if there was a bit more pragmatism and a bit less dogma... Could just be me, and your mileage might vary, however...
Customer Rating:
Summary: useful advice on designing web pages
Comment: The authors give very useful advice on designing web pages. Most of which comes across as common sense, once you read it. For example, if you have text in blue that is not clickable, it is not a good idea. Many users are now conditioned to regard blue text as a link, and might even consider your page broken if it does not click!
The book also reports on the curious state of searching. Surveys indicate that the usage of a general purpose search engine, like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft, seems to give more relevant results, than a local search of a user's corporate website. Even though you'd imagine that the opposite should be true.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Web usability book of the year 2006! No more excuses. Use it!
Comment: Ten years ago, the Web was exciting to people. Today it's routine. It's a tool. If it's convenient, they will use it; if not, they won't. Users are getting less tolerant of difficult sites, so every design flaw means lost business. Thus, usability has more more important than ever.
This is the introduction of the reviewed book and I fully agree that it is time we prioritize Web usability. Of course, we all know about the fact that usability is important, but are we only paying lip service to the issue. When we decide between great design and great us-ability issues there's is often a trade-off. How often do we accept a lower level of usability in order to show off cool design? By the way, it is not that difficult to measure: Can people use the site at all? Test it!
Author Jakob Nielsen has a world-class reputation as Web usability expert since 1995 and this book co-authored by Hoa Loranger proves that he is still going strong.
A "practice of simplicity" has always been characterizing Jakob Nielsen's approach to us-ability. A picture is worth a 1000 words and thus the authors has filled this book with new screen shots that show what design mistakes we should avoid. The authors' visualizing and keeping it simple approach makes this book very easy to digest. If you have your own Web site you probably cannot help browsing your own web site to find design mistakes.
After having read this book with a huge number of best practices, why do you still need to do your own user testing? The reason is because usability guidelines are based on three levels of research:
* general guidelines: user behaviour across most web sites
* specialized guidelines: findings about specific genres or areas of sites (such as e-commerce usability or e-government services)
* specific guidelines: detailed findings about a specific site and its customers
This book only deals with the general guidelines. They may solve 50-80% of your usability problems, but to become best-in-class you need to go all the way to the specific guide-lines.
I like Nielsen's $200 user test. It makes it accessible for anybody. No more excuses. Pick 3-4 people in your target group. Give them some specific tasks for your web site. Then observe. Discover what users actually do, not what they say they do (via questionnaires, etc.). So observe, don't survey. Discuss what you have learned and make the changes. Test again, if need be. It's simple, it is cheap, and it is fast. Use.it!
I have always been very inspired by Nielsen's manifesto for usability. But beware. He may be a little radical in his approach to usability (although seemingly less so as he matures!). For instance, I always found the design of his own Web site awful. It is very usable obvi-ously, but .... To me it just proves the fact that all Web site owners have to find their own right balance between cool design and great usability.
I also recommend Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think", and McGovern's books on Web Content. I addition, I strongly recommend the Eisenberg brothers' book on "A call for Action", especially targeted for the e-commerce segment.
A final note: This book is about your customers and what they need, not about you. If that is of your concern, then do spend the next week in companion with this book. Ultimately, it is about you also. Once you start working actively with how people interact with your de-sign, you can make it better than your competitor's.
Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Comment: I have been waiting for a new Jakob Nielsen book for years after particularly enjoying the 50 homepages deconstructed book by him. It was with eager anticipation that I first started to read it. However, I was disppointed for many reasons:
- The first 100 pages are pretty obvious to anyone who is at all into website usability, it just talks about improvements made to usability, with little thought given to new usability problems that have appeared since his last book.
- The case studies are good, but he doesn't conduct a big enough sample group. 50 homepages book did this way better, and for bigger and more industry standard websites.
- The last few chapters have very little real direction and seem to have just been bolted on to make the book longer. Almost left a sour taste in my mouth when I finished, making me think, 'hmmm, tell me something I didn't already know'.
If you have already read his first book, then I would seriously recommend his '50 homepages deconstructed' book over this. Way more informative with many more action items in it.
He also continues to ignore critical areas of 'why and how' you need to improve usability - to increase lead generation and sales. This has way more of an impact for most businesses. Books like 'Call to Action' by Brian Eisenberg do a much better job of this and provide you with more action items to improve websites.
I'm disappointed Jakob....
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting read, if you've read the first book.
Comment: This book seems more like an updated edition of the previous book. It does not contain many new thoughts.
+ concisely written and well-illustrated
- poor use of popular language (e.g. "lame") at times.
- not much new content, compared to the 1999 "Web Usability" book by Nielsen
- too many references to other reports & seminars which can be purchased from Nielsen/Norman Group. I don't buy a book to receive a sales brochure from a company.
- the book states that you should use "everyday" users to test an "everyday" website. However, in several of the quoted user statements, users use such terms as "I don't think this is user friendly" which sound more like a technical opinion, rather than an empirical fact.
- It seems that some reviews are biased, mainly the one for the Social Security website.
- Some of the websites chosen to review are low-traffic and amateuristic websites. I would have preferred larger websites for all screenshots.
- It's unclear which parts Nielsen wrote, and which parts his associate. I'm afraid that Nielsen lent his name for the cover only.
###
I've read all of Nielsen's books and I would not
recommend this one since it does not hold as many fundamentals as his 1999 book.
His previous co-authored book on homepages is a well-written and beautifully illustrated book.
|
|
|
