EBlog

Nielsen lets us know where we (users and designers) stand on usability.

February 4, 2008 | Posted by: Nicholas

Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox installment is a doozy! Through a study of a broad spectrum of users (but with a bias toward high income business types), they've found out a bunch of new, and in many cases confirmed a lot of already-known, design and usability problem areas. Among the most interesting:

• A minority, but a large one, still don't know to click the logo to get to a site's home page.
• When a link jumps the surfer from one area of a site to another, the surfer doesn't realize the change in context.
• Opening new windows confuses people.
• People still balk at giving out personal information, and B2B sites are the worst at demanding registration before the surfer is ready to hand it over.
• People completely overlook non-standard scrollbars and miss valuable content as a result.