Jakob Nielsen: Good information architecture makes users less alienate...

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

Jakob Nielsen

appropriate feedback should

A general principle for all user interface design is to go through all of your design elements and remove them one at a time.

Jakob Nielsen

elements design principles

The web is the ultimate customer-empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouseclick away.

Jakob Nielsen

empowering environment world

The usability tests we have conducted during the last year have shown an increasing reluctance among users to accept innovations in Web design. The prevailing attitude is to request designs that are similar to everything else people see on the Web.

Jakob Nielsen

attitude people years

Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone.

Jakob Nielsen

progressive errors used

...the book is a manifesto to make the Web atone for the sins of computers and regain a level of simplicity that can put humanity at peace with its tools once again.

Jakob Nielsen

simplicity humanity book

Inadequate use of usability engineering methods in software development projects have been estimated to cost the US economy about $30 billion per year in lost productivity.

Jakob Nielsen

engineering cost years

Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

Jakob Nielsen

information use memories

The best Web sites are better than Reality.

Jakob Nielsen

site reality

Information Overload = "information pollution"

Jakob Nielsen

information-overload pollution information

If your users have many questions, it's a failure of your primary site design. It becomes not so much customer support, as much as customer complaints.

Jakob Nielsen

site support design

Windows '98 is so similar to Windows '95 because Apple hasn't invented anything worth copying since 1995.

Jakob Nielsen

copying apples window

Developing fewer features allows you to conserve development resources and spend more time refining those features that users really need. Fewer features mean fewer things to confuse users, less risk of user errors, less description and documentation, and therefore simpler Help content. Removing any one feature automatically increases the usability of the remaining ones.

Jakob Nielsen

simplicity errors mean

Popularity is the product of two factors: (a) how compelling material you offer, and (b) how easy it is to access it. Host free pirated movies and users will flock to the site, even if it's difficult to use.

Jakob Nielsen

host use two

Users are not designers.

Jakob Nielsen

users designer design

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

Jakob Nielsen

documentation tasks may

Diversity is power on the Web. Big sites may be bigger, but smaller sites will keep scoring higher for specialized topics, both in terms of their connections with users and in terms of each visit's commercial value.

Jakob Nielsen

diversity connections may

Compared to 1999...we cannot quite declare victory, but we can declare progress.

Jakob Nielsen

progress victory interesting

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Jakob Nielsen

design errors messages

What we learned is money doesn't grow on trees.

Jakob Nielsen

grows tree

Good information architecture makes users less alienated and suppressed by technology. It simultaneously increases human satisfaction and your company's profits. Very few jobs allow you to do both at the same time, so enjoy.