Jakob Nielsen Gets A Makeover
May 19, 2004 | 
21 Comments
So Andrei Herasimchuk, Didier Hilhorst, Cameron Moll, Greg Storey, and I decided to take a stab at using design to make Jakob Nielsen a bit more palatable.
I think we did a pretty good job. At the same time we really wanted to showcase the benefits of design when coupled with usability. These things don’t have to be at odds as many people seem to think.
We all took this project very seriously, even though we did have fun with it. While we didn’t have any users to test our work with, I think we did really well. If nothing else we’re helping to bring the messages of user-centered design to a wider audience.
So give it a read and a look-see and let me know what you think.
Filed under: IA and Usability
Comments
1. JC said:
hey, nice work, there. Now if only dearest Jakob would listen and implement….
Posted on May 19, 2004 01:31 PM | #
2. Simon Jessey said:
“make Jakob Nielsen a bit more palatable.”
ROFL. He is something of an acquired taste, isn’t he? Seriously though, I think the work you all did was outstanding.
Posted on May 19, 2004 01:41 PM | #
3. Jennifer Grucza said:
That was a great article, and I think I liked your part the best - the transformation was spectacular! I like how you retained familiar elements from his existing site while making it much easier to scan and read.
Posted on May 19, 2004 02:15 PM | #
4. Peter Zignego said:
Nicely done:) Informative and funny!
Posted on May 19, 2004 04:32 PM | #
5. Tim said:
Keith,
as has been pointed out at Andrei’s, this wasn’t the first time that such a makeover has been attempted (see The Reuseit competition).
What this does have, though, is process, rather than just results. Mighty fine process and results, too, if you ask me.
Well done all!
Posted on May 20, 2004 01:57 AM | #
6. David Barrett said:
Good work guys, though I doubt Nielsen will take any of this on board; he’s so fond of saying he’s not a designer, that any good design introduced onto his site may be seen as giving the whole design field some sort of credibility.
Posted on May 20, 2004 01:59 AM | #
7. Kevin Tamura said:
Man, I love this. My IT guy and I were just talking about how bad his site looks last week. Oh now if Jakob will implement this.
Posted on May 20, 2004 07:08 AM | #
8. Eric said:
Nice work, all of you. Much better than the reusit competition because of its comprehensiveness and process (and a better visual result than any of those entries, in my opinion).
David: it’s still so mystifying to me why he persists in that position…the whole point of design is its integrativeness. His firm’s website is still a (small) step up from his useit site (although I always want to click on ‘Norman’ in the masthead - I guess it has a large affordance of clickability because it is red), and I assume it’s because they are trying to sell something to people. The same argument should get through to him - he’s trying to sell usability to the web community, which includes (gasp) designers. If you’re going to sell something to me, it has to look decent. And hell, if you’re selling usability, it should be usable; something else that he misses on useit.com.
Posted on May 20, 2004 07:47 AM | #
9. Andrew said:
Nice work. It’s astounding that Jakob simply ignores efforts like this. Maybe he feels he’d be compromising his position if he acknowledges the value of visual design? Love the idea of printable guideline sheets.
Posted on May 20, 2004 07:54 AM | #
10. Justin said:
The lack of design on his site has become his brand. I bet he gets some kind of sick pleasure watching people redesign his site in fustration. Meanwhile we bicker about font-sizing, rendering bugs, etc. his site sure isn’t pretty, but it works.
Anyway… I like it! :-)
Posted on May 20, 2004 08:49 AM | #
11. Seth Thomas Rasmussen said:
As I said on Andre’s site, “very VERY nice stuff!” (Okay, not a direct quote, I apologize for gross misuse of quotation marks.)
But yes, well done.
Posted on May 20, 2004 09:14 AM | #
12. Gene said:
I agree, it’s great and very funny. But Keith, um, what’s with your hair? Are you rocking the faux-hawk in that photo?
Posted on May 20, 2004 12:34 PM | #
13. Steveg said:
Hmmm … It looks nice … Buuuut.
Okay, good copy edit. Much better wording than the original.
I question the usefulness of the icons. Yes they look good and reinforce text but they are very contrary to the bulletin mode of delivery. A bulletin should be something that has a short gestation from inspiration to delivery. Having icons in one bulletin brings the expectation that there will be icons in every bulletin. Does Jakob have a graphics designer on tap who can produce a new set of icons at 6 hours notice?
The format is too tall and narrow and does not make effective use of my screen acreage.
The printable quick card has some problems when printed on a monochrome printer. The red totally disapears against the yellow. What is the purpose of the back side? It conveys no new information and the grapics are unreadable and ineffective as examples.
Which part of flash is compatible with useability? I have no idea what the presentation was because I couldn’t view it either at home or work.
I found it hard to be sure that I ‘got’ all of the article. There seemed to be no differentiation between links leading to irrelavancies and links leading to the actual product you were trying to display.
A very commendable effort but a B- for useability.
Posted on May 20, 2004 06:35 PM | #
14. Keith said:
Gene – Yeah, I think it is a bit of a faux hawk…the ladies dig it though.
Steveg – As far as the “format” goes. I’m going to have to disagree with you on that. Nielsen’s original is much, much to wide. I set the font to 31ems which should provide for an almost ideal line-length at any size. If the font is too small you can bump it up and it’ll still maintain a good, readable, line-length.
I’m not sure I get your point on the icons at all.
As far as the Flash bit goes, that’s just an extra. You don’t need it as all the content is contained within the guidelines. Sure it’s Flash – but when provided with the rest it’s just fine.
My educated guess would put, at the very least, our version at an A for usability. Oh, and it looks nicer too. I honestly believe that our version is more usable. We’d need to test it with users, but I’ve had quite a bit of experience in that area and I’m confident our version would perform better.
Having said that, we picked one guideline and had five very smart people focusing solely on it. A bit of an unfair advantage. I’m not trying to take a thing away for Jakob – it’s just that usability doesn’t end with him.
Posted on May 20, 2004 06:50 PM | #
15. Amit Deshpande said:
Some things don’t change.
I read this once
“When you are at the top, if you make enough mistakes, it is considered your style!”
I would make it a style sheet for Jakob!
Best Regards,
Amit
Posted on May 20, 2004 10:57 PM | #
16. Steveg said:
Keith: The point with the Icons is Didier is a talented chap but how long did he spend developing those Icons? The icons are unlikely to be recyclable to the next bulletin. Can you reasonably expect Jakob to have somone of Didier’s talent spend that much time for every bulletin? I suggest it is unlikely so no icons in the template.
I will agree to Jacobs layout being too attenuated. However that is largely because he fails to make effective use of headings. You do have working headings and there would be no problem letting the layout fill more of the page (as I am looking at it about 50% of my screen width is unused). You could keep the paragraphs compact by having the hints in two columns. I think that would work. But I’m a reader more than a designer.
Yes you design is much more readable than the original. A large part of that is the headings and the better copy editing. I wouldn’t argue with an A for visual design.
But what you have created is a one off design not a corporate template. So I’m deducting marks for that plus the unusable examples and poor monochrome conversion in the quickcard. I’ll let you get away with the flash.
Don’t take this too seriously. I’m not out to shoot down your balloon. And I have a deal of respect for the team’s individual and combined design skills. It is just if you came to me at work with this as a solution I would have to say that it was not useable.
Posted on May 21, 2004 01:03 AM | #
17. CJ said:
Well I’d like to comment on it, but I can’t access the thing because our corporate firewall has blocked the site. Someone probably posted a comment with a naughty word in. Either way I’m sure the outcome is excellent.
Steveg: Even though I don’t know what these icons look like, I do know that you don’t need to be a graphics designer to get them. There are hundreds of resources on the internet for quality icons (iconFactory, RA’s page etc. etc.) and creating a pixelated icon from a photo is pretty trivial. True you do have to have some sort of artistic flair… but you don’t need to be as fantastic as Didier to come up with the goods.
Posted on May 21, 2004 03:07 AM | #
18. hizzy said:
it looks too blog-like
Posted on May 21, 2004 06:56 AM | #
19. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
Steveg, the amount of man hours used by the five of us to create this piece was probably in the 10 hour range. Around two hours a piece I’d reckon.
Didier’s illustration are simple and straight-forward. The hardest part is usally thinking of the idea for the icons. As for Keith’s template, creating a system for Useit.com out of that one idea would take no longer than a week to get into place, and one that worked for the whole deal. That’s how long it tok me to get the original DxF in place, and I coded and designe the whole thing myself. It’s not rocket science.
As for expecting Nielsen to take the kind of time and effort with his websiite and the proclamations he makes to make Useit.com look professional? The answer to that is an easy yes. The man makes like $30,000 a DAY for consulting and seminars. He can deal.
Stop making excuses for him, because that’s all you are doing. He’s a grown man. He knows (or should know) how little effort it take learning some BASIC design principles to make his work look more professional.
ESPECIALLY if he is going to continue to push the usability agenda further into the design agenda with his work by trying to tell designers how to design. (Which is what writing guidelines on how links should look and act does.)
Posted on May 21, 2004 10:27 AM | #
20. Steveg said:
Keith: Point taken. And yes I do agree he could do a lot better escpecially given his standing in the non-technical community.
If Didier took that little time to distill those icons out of the text I am in awe. That is not a common skill.
Posted on May 21, 2004 05:24 PM | #
21. Steveg said:
D’oh … Substitute Andrei for Keith.
Posted on May 21, 2004 05:26 PM | #
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