UseIT - Dealing with the impossible

November 11, 2003 | View Comments (5) | Category: Design Journal

Summary: The impossibility of redesigning Nielsen's useit.com

There has been many discussions about the entries to the useit redesign contest held over at Built for the future. There are some good designs and some okay designs. Many people would agree that there is nothing spectacular. However, I do not blame the contestants, I blame Jakob for making an usable site where trying to make something good and useful is almost an impossibility.

One of the first things about any design is to make sure the design follows the content. For this to occur you have to be aware of what content you are going to have on your site and give that content a ranking. What I mean by ranking is that not every section of content should not have the same ranking as the others. Sure some sections have equal weight, but it is always good to have a section that stands out on its own. If not, this will cause major problems to how you decide to layout the site and where you wish to guide your audience (just ask Yahoo). Jakob has decided that he will post anything and everything on his homepage trying to bombard you with information.

So let's say I overlook the plethora (haha, nice word there) of information that is jammed onto his homepage and look at how he distinguishes between sections. Well he has two columns, one yellow and one blue. So that leads me to believe there are really only two types of content on the site. When you read the two columns you are obviously wrong because almost none of the sections are relative to each other. I broke the site down into 5 main sections: about, alertbox, news, conference announcements, and paid services. Make those sections distinct and I think we can begin to work with something usable. An easy way to help break things down would be to change the header color to something other than the text-body color. However, the different sizes of headers and content could be looked upon as distinct enough. A border or two would not hurt either

Okay so he doesn't wish to distinguish between anything on his site. Fair enough. We all know he is not a designer and states this many times himself. However, not being a designer gives you no excuse to use such colors on your site. The colors themselves offer no visual hierarchy to anything. On the right side with the blue, everything just seems to mix together causing me to concentrate even harder on what I wish to find.

When I go to a site it is nice to know what the site is about, especially if they are trying to sell me something. When I go to useit.com I see it is Jakob Nielsen's site. Okay, this must be some sort of personal site like one of those blogs I have been hearing about. Oooo, I see he has some reports. I like to read reports so lemme check one out. Wait, how come it took me to a different site? I have to pay for these reports? Forget it, time to go read whitespace.

It is easy to talk about the aesthetic value of Nielsen's site (hint: there is none), but it is more interesting when you start to look at the usability flaws that he introduces into his site. Tomorrow I will go over some more issues that I think he missed on his own site and also show you a redesign of his site the way I see it.

In the end you can see that I do not fault the contestants of the reuseit contest. It is easy to redesign an ugly site. It is much harder to redesign a site whose content doesn't allow for any practical design.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/50

Comments

#1

"the usability flaws that he introduces into his site"

BLASPHEMER!!! You will be burned by a wet squirrel at moonset!

My personal take on Jakob is that he's a useful tool. If there's something we want done that he happens to support, he makes for a good argument.

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#2

The problem begins to lie in the fact that when someone stops practicing what they preach then they begin to lose their credentials. Also when that person shows no growth then you have to wonder if they are really learning anything new. The web is still young and therefore not all the rules stay the same. Sticking with usability guidelines from 1997 may bode well if you plan on having your site only viewed on a cellphone.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#3

To me useit.com is a reminder of what html was supposed to be -- a tool to share and distribute information. html was never intended for design. Of course we have come far from those days and it is for the good.

I have always found useit to be confusing, devoid of proper organization. Yet the man continues to generate readership, commands respect and works as a consultant for big name firms. Maybe people care more about his message more than anything else. As for me, the message is not the only thing. To me aesthetics is also a critical component of any form of communication, especially for a visual medium such as the web. Mind you, I am not asking for a top notch design here, just make it easy on the eyes.

Sunny (http://www.thesunreport.org/)

#4

But see that is the thing, I think he is just getting by on his name alone nowadays. Do I envy the fact that he is making crazy money and someone is talking about him everyday? Hell yeah. Does he deserve the respect he gets. Yes, because of what he has done for the web in the past. But now he is simply stating common sense things that most designers should be able to pickup. If more larger firms read the independent web, I am certain you would see he would be getting less attention.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#5

Although I believe asthetics and design are an integral part of usability (and useit.com lacks a well developed asthetic), I am able to understand what content is available on his homepage rather quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I understand and agree with the argument being presented here, I just think there is an even greater usability issue with the website beyond the graphic design (or non-design).

He clearly states he is not a "graphic" designer, so that means he must work predominately with text. That's fine. But, his text is very user un-friendly. When I navigate off his homepage, I find a page with text spanning the entire width of my screen. In my books, this breaks a lot of visual usability rules. Text that spans the entire width of your page is extremely hard to read on screen.

I guess I just find it odd. He is willing to rank the placement of a "Search" label beside the common search box (instead of another descriptive title) within his top 10 usability issues. Yet, the usability of his main content, text, is so poor.

Strange.

Sam

Keep track of comments to all entries with the Comments Feed