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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

  • The UX Maturity Model

    Is the UX Maturity model from 15 years ago still valid, and can companies stay at the highest level, the user-centered corporation?

  • PDF: Still Unfit for Human Consumption, 20 Years Later

    Research spanning 20 years proves PDFs are problematic for online reading. Yet they’re still prevalent and users continue to get lost in them. They’re unpleasant to read and navigate and remain unfit for digital-content display.

  • Remote Work and Play: The Most Important UX Challenge

    At the virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen was asked "What's the most interesting UX topic at the moment?" Answer: better support for remote lifestyles.

  • Improving the User Experience of Medical Devices

    Can we make healthcare enjoyable for patients? Or at least less bad than now? Yes, at least as far as medical devices go, because they can be designed with more emphasis on user experience, and thus become easier and more pleasant to use.

  • Convincing Companies to Do UX and Accessibility

    The relationship between accessibility and usability and the best ways to convince companies to take both seriously were some of the audience questions answered by Jakob Nielsen at the Virtual UX Conference.

  • Is There Value in Having Others than the Designers Work on UX?

    Some designers feel that they know everything about UX, including how to do research, so is there any value in having others contribute, whether dedicated user researchers or external consultants?

  • Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading

    Forcing users to browse PDF files causes frustration and slow task completion, compared to standard webpages. Use PDF only for documents that users will print. In those cases, following 10 basic guidelines will minimize usability problems.

  • Can Market Research Teams and UX Research Teams Collaborate and Avoid Miscommunication?

    The total customer journey and user experience quality will benefit from considering market research and user research to be highly related, and to integrate the two, instead of keeping different kinds of research teams from collaborating.

  • How UX Changes in the Recession

    At the Virtual UX Conference, Jakob Nielsen answered audience questions on how UX changes with the downturn in the world economy and what new industries will benefit from UX.

  • Long-Term Changes in UX and in Adaptation of Innovations

    How has the field of user experience changed over the last 30 years, how will it continue to change, and what can we expect for the uptake of technology innovations?