Chapter 3 from Jakob Nielsen's book, Multimedia and Hypertext, describes the major milestones for hypertext, the internet, and the world wide web, including Vannevar Bush's Memex and Doug Engelbart's landmark demo of the online system (NLS.)
Usability inspection is the generic name for a set of methods that are all based on having evaluators inspect a user interface. Typically, usability inspection is aimed at finding usability problems in the design, though some methods also address issues like the severity of the usability problems and the overall usability of an entire system.
Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb for UX and not specific usability guidelines.
A summary of statistics for 13 usability laboratories in 1994, an introduction to the main uses of usability laboratories in usability engineering, and survey of some of the issues related to practical use of user testing and computer-aided usability engineering.
This essay describes a technique for extending a task analysis based on the principle of goal composition. Basically, goal composition starts by considering each primary goal that the user may have when using the system. A list of possible additional features is then generated by combining each of these goals with a set of general meta-goals that extend the primary goals.
Jakob Nielsen's trip report for the 1993 Usability Professionals Association (UPA) Annual Meeting.
Usability Professionals Association Annual Meeting (Redmond, WA, July 21-23, 1993), SIGCHI Bulletin 26, 2 (April 1994).
Several new user interface technologies and interaction principles seem to define a new generation of user interfaces that will move off the flat screen and into the physical world to some extent. Many of these next-generation interfaces will not have the user control the computer through commands, but will have the computer adapt the dialogue to the user's needs based on its inferences from observing the user. This article defines twelve dimensions across which future user interfaces may differ from the canonical window systems of today: User focus, the computer's role, interface control, syntax, object visibility, interaction stream, bandwidth, tracking feedback, interface locus, user programming, and software packaging.
Nielsen, J. (1993). Noncommand user interfaces. Communications of the ACM 36, 4 (April), 83-99.
A user test of handwritten input on a pen machine achieved a 1.6% recognition error rate at the character level, corresponding to 8.8% errors on the word level. Input speed was 10 words per minute. In spite of the recognition errors, information retrieval of the handwritten notes was almost as good as retrieval of perfect text.
How users react to delays in a user interface, whether website or application. The 3 main response time limits are determined by human perceptual abilities.
Jakob Nielsen's trip report for the 1992 Computer-Human Interaction conference (CHI '92).
CHI'92 (Monterey, CA, 3-7 May 1992), IEEE Software 9, 4 (July 1992), pp. 78- 79.
The concept of direct manipulation is usually viewed as a single characteristic of a class of interaction styles. Here, direct manipulation is analyzed according to a detailed layered interaction model, showing that it has quite different effects on the dialogue on the different levels. In particular, the "no errors" claim may be true at the syntax level but not at several of the levels above or below that level.
Furthermore, a unified framework is presented for conceptualizing Direct Manipulation, What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG), Transparency, Immediate Command Specification, Arcticulatory Directness, and Computational Appliances according to a layered interaction view.
Trip report from the ACM Hypertext'89 conference. Includes summary of Meyrowitz' discussion of open integrating hypertext and the extent to which the Memex vision has been realized so far.
Hypertext'89 (Pittsburgh, PA, 5-8 November 1989), SIGCHI Bulletin 21, 4 (April 1990), pp. 52-61.
Jakob Nielsen's trip report from the 1989 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI '89) conference held in Austin, Texas.
CHI'89 (Austin, TX, 30 April - 4 May 1989), SIGCHI Bulletin 21, 2 (October 1989), pp. 28-40.
Jakob Nielsen's trip report for the 1989 Hyper Hyper Conference in London, UK.
British Computer Society HyperHyper workshop (London, UK, 23 February 1989), SIGCHI Bulletin 21, 1 (July 1989), pp. 65-67.
Jakob Nielsen's trip report for the 1987 Hypertext conference.
HyperTEXT'87 (Chapel Hill, NC, 13-15 November 1987), SIGCHI Bulletin 19, 4 (April 1988), pp. 27-35. Also exists in a hypertext version in HyperCard format.
People have very limited ability to keep information in their working memory while performing tasks, so user interfaces should be designed accordingly: to minimize memory load. One way of doing so is to offload items to external memory by showing them on the screen.
Video game design is a special case of user interface design, with some differences (especially in user goals) but also many similarities with more traditional UX design problems and methods.
The user experience field will see dramatic changes over the next 3 decades, driven by trends in demographics and the world economy. We will end up like the Little Mermaid. (This was Jakob Nielsen's UX Conference keynote.)
Problems arise when people get older, but that just means opportunities for better design to support elderly users. The very best designs will help the elderly, but also be adapted by everybody else.
Users waste unacceptably much time struggling with computer bugs. Users' mental models suffer when systems don't work as advertised, leading people to question their understanding of the UX.
To solve big-scale design problems, Don Norman recommends engaging with the community that has these problems and leveraging existing creativity and experience.
Human-centered design has 4 principles: understand the problem, the people, and the system, and do iterative design. But what if you don't have time to do all 4 steps?
At the first Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen answered participant questions about topics ranging from user-experience careers and skill development to foldable smartphones and the future of user interfaces.
User interfaces must be fast, or users will give up. (In the case of websites, they'll leave if pages download too slowly.) The exact maximum response times vary by usage circumstances, and should be either 0.1, 1.0, or 10 seconds.
In a graphical user interface, having the user move a cursor within a narrow path (e.g., in a hierarchical menu or a slider) follows a strict law for how easy or difficult it is to do, depending on specifics of the GUI.
Fitts's Law describes how long it takes a user to hit a target in a graphical user interface (GUI) or other design, as a function of size and distance. Understanding this law helps us design better buttons, forms, lists, and other interactive elements.
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is not about following processes. It’s about being mindful of HCD principles. Keep focus on people and the entire system to solve the right problems.
Aesthetically pleasing designs can provide memorable experiences that differentiate a brand. However, interfaces should only include necessary elements, with high informational value. Clarity will always win over visual flourish.
Carefully examine the user’s context, task at hand, and next steps when deciding whether to open links to documents and external sites in the same or a new browser tab.
Task analysis is the systematic study of how users complete tasks to achieve their goals. This knowledge ensures products and services are designed to efficiently and appropriately support those goals.
Now that people can easily find answers to their questions directly on results pages, content creators must rethink their role in providing information to their users.
In people with normal vision (or corrected-to-normal vision), visual performance tends to be better with light mode, whereas some people with cataract and related disorders may perform better with dark mode. On the flip side, long-term reading in light mode may be associated with myopia.
When deciding which links to click on the web, users choose those with the highest information scent — which is a mix of cues that they get from the link label, the context in which the link is shown, and their prior experiences.
To measure learnability, determine your metric, gather your data, and plot the averages on a line curve. Analyze the learning curve by looking at its slope and its plateau.
Digital products are competing for users’ limited attention. The modern economy increasingly revolves around the human attention span and how products capture that attention.
Dropdowns, hierarchical menus, sliders, or scroll bars involve steering a pointer or a cursor through a tunnel; optimal design for these GUI elements should consider the Steering Law.
As people consider whether to use the new "creepy" technologies, they do a type of cost-benefit analysis weighing the loss of privacy against the benefits they will receive in return.
Vehicle controls should be easily accessible and require minimum attention from drivers, while driving-related information should be displayed clearly and understandably.
In a modal interface, the same user action can have different results depending on the state of the system. Poorly signaled modes can easily trigger user errors with disastrous consequences.
Many websites fail to provide the right information for research-based tasks, requiring unnecessary effort for users to piece together various information sources manually.
Users of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant conceptualize them in one of 3 ways: an interface, a personal assistant, or a brain. Frequent users are less likely to push the interaction limits of these AI systems than new users.
In a study of people interacting with systems built on machine-learning algorithms, users had weak mental models and difficulties making the UI do what they want.
Far from being ‘intelligent’, today’s chatbots guide users through simple linear flows, and our user research shows that they have a hard time whenever users deviate from such flows.
Designs that quickly convey relationships between the user input and the result often use natural mappings or have a high stimulus–response compatibility.
