FAQs - not great for UX, whatever Nielsen says

At the end of last year, Nielsen Norman Group published an article talking up the website FAQ. I usually only post on positives and what I think is good advice, so didn't blog about this as I didn't agree. However, a couple of responses to this contentious article are well worth a read.

The fold still matters, says Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen's company have just released an interesting study on user attention and willingness to scroll. The bottom line: the top of the page is still critically important despite the wide range of browsing devices now in use.

What user research when?

Christian Rohrer's graphing of user research techniques has been around for a while; he's just written a great article about it for Jakob Nielsen's useit.com.

Information Architecture's relationship with navigation design

A couple of good articles that talk about the relationship between website navigation design and information architecture (IA) and highlight what makes them distinct.

Putting service design ahead of the politics

The "fiasco" around the US public health service website HealthCare.gov and President Obama's announcement about it has prompted quite a lot of articles and opinions. In among the doom and gloom and politics, there were some good nuggets for those of us involved in public sector web development.

Nielsen on dangers of challenging navigation

A recent article on Jakob Nielsen's site talks about the dangers of challenging navigation. The conclusions drawn from user research observations are interesting, but I feel they're only covering half the issue.

Micro content - it's the little things that matter

Well crafted web pages or great features in an app will be undermined if the micro content associated with it isn't right. The little snippets of teaser text, form labels and help text give users confidence and encourage deeper engagement.

Nielsen mobile recommendations provoke design community rage

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen recently wrote an article summarising his recommendations for mobile website, which prompted quite a degree of anger in the design community. So much so that he responded to some of the feedback via an interview in .net magazine.

Usability ROI Nielsen report - Free to University of Edinburgh colleagues

I contributed to the 4th edition of Jakob Nielsen's Usability Return on Investment report, getting a site licensed copy for the University in the process.

Eyetracking Facebook social media

Summaries of a couple of eyetracking studies conducted mainly on Facebook - one for brand pages and one for personal pages. The personal page study also compared behaviour with other social media sites.

Mobile website strategy

There's more to a mobile site than simply reformatting your existing website to suit a small screen. Jakob Nielsen and Gerry McGovern explain why.

Nielsen's heuristics in action

Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics are nicely illustrated in this article pulling together lots of examples of good practice.

Website usability for mobile users

Jakob Nielsen has done a couple of studies in recent years that reveal a lot about user behaviour on websites when using mobile devices. Some companies are very aware of these differences and develop strategies accordingly.

User time on web pages

Jakob Nielsen summarises some new research revealing more about how long users typically spend on web pages. Basically an interesting and detailed piece of work that can be summarised as, 'not very long at all, almost all of the time'.

Nielsen usability report free to University of Edinburgh staff

The Nielsen Norman group report "College Students on the Web" is available to University of Edinburgh staff on a site license.

International usability - Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen summarises his findings from usability testing across 3 continents.

How many customers should you test with?

Jakob Nielsen famously wrote about "Why you only need to test with 5 users", and Steve Krug gave a similar variation in his book "Don't make me think". Jeff Sauro digs deeper. He's really into his numbers, so if statistics and probability are a turn off for you, just skip to the conclusion.

Readability & comprehension of webpages - mobile implications

Jakob Nielsen talks through the difference between readability and comprehension of online content and introduces the Cloze Test - a really easy way to score how easy your content is to understand. He relates this to a study of mobile user behaviour.

Combine usability test techniques for maximum benefit

Nielsen reviews 3 basic usability testing techniques - Competitive testing, parallel design and iterative design - and concludes the greatest benefit comes from combining them together.

Non-profit website research - Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen summarises his recent usablity studies on not-for-profit websites, focusing on users trying to donate their money, time or things they no longer need. Some interesting, and not so surprising findings.