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Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Dr. Nielsen established the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.

Articles and Videos

  • UX 2050 (Jakob Nielsen keynote)

    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.)

  • The Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and User Experience

    Do AI products have good user experience? Only partly, and to get better, we need to focus AI more on human needs than on what's technically possible. But AI can also help UX professionals do their job better, which will improve usability more widely.

  • Can UX Help in Procurement of Enterprise Solutions?

    Will enterprise solutions ever get good usability? Jakob Nielsen is skeptical in the short term, but cautiously optimistic in the long term.

  • Is A/B Testing Faster than Usability Testing at Getting Results?

    If A/B testing can quickly show which design is best, why should a UX team bother doing usability studies and other user research?

  • Field Studies vs. Ethnographic Studies vs. Contextual Inquiry

    What is the difference between a field study, an ethnographic study, and a contextual inquiry in a user experience design project? Not much. The main difference is that between field methods and lab-based user research.

  • Augmented/Virtual Reality vs. Computer Screens

    Will 3D user interfaces like VR and AR replace flat screens, and how should UX designers prepare for these technologies?

  • Time to Make Tech Work

    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.

  • Who Inspired Jakob Nielsen?

    At the Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen talked about the people who inspired him early in his career — and more recently.

  • Abandoning Best Practices in UX

    When should one abandon best practices in user experience, and what does it take to declare that something is a best practice?

  • Vocabulary Inflation in UX

    The user experience field is plagued by vocabulary inflation: repeatedly replacing well-known terminology with new fancy words that cause miscommunication.