Jakob Nielsen Knows Bad Design
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- former20
He's a good example that good design and talent are not necessary for success (in the business world).
- nor good looks.MrOneHundred
- but he has lots of nice photos of himselfjfletcher
- mikotondria30
on his famewhore mugshots page he helpfully states that the larger versions of the pictures are "several hundred kilobytes"...
My!
That is helpful for people 'who are on dial-up', particularly the small number of those that want to download a large picture of Jakob Nielsen pulling a face akin to that of an embarrassed teenager holding up a mouse, and who might sit there in confusion were the image not to immediately display on his 486.
Were I that fictional, theoretical person, who existed only the bowels of some ill-informed statistical journey, I would high five him for graciously 'using' that part of the page purely for my benefit, whilst making the other 99.99999999% of sane, literate people who went to the page think that they had blundered into a cobweb-infested geocities avenue by mistake.
Berk.
- MrOneHundred0
- Sorry for the huge image.MrOneHundred
- this image is 815.15 KB It may take several minutes to download.mikotondria3
- I missed that warning. His website is so badly designed.MrOneHundred
- I FUCKING HATE HIM
AAAAAAAAAAARGGHHH...vrmbr
- slappy0
I want to get Jacob and Apples design team together in the same room...
- ukit0
- jfletcher0
Ok, I'm adding a section to my blog with headshots. If that's how you charge 5K a day, consider it done. I'll post again when I'm done it!
- ukit0
If Nielsen and people like Eric Jordan have taught us anything, it's that a little bit of self-aggrandizement doesn't hurt to get ahead
- jfletcher0
It's very true. Despite we somewhat laugh at it, it does work.
Now where did I put my headshots!
- drgs0
actually.. ive read it....it all makes sense
"every extra design element detracts from all the other design elements"- Phew! No more design elements. Makes my job pretty quick n’ easy.MrOneHundred
- well it shouldn'tkelpie
- mikotondria30
"3D navigation is almost always bad. It's harder to manipulate, it doesn't show the choices as well as a 2D interface, and it tends to be slower to use."
Oh, how I think this everytime I try to look for something in my house, and wander from room to room.
"If only this were laid out in 14pt Arial, with a color scheme from 1998, then I could easily track down my daughters school bag in record time", I think as I slowly spin on the y-axis.- 3d navigation is 3d projected on a 2d screen, the easiness of "wandering" is not comparable
drgs
- 3d navigation is 3d projected on a 2d screen, the easiness of "wandering" is not comparable
- YAYPaul0
I hate you Nielsen... Look what you make companies do!
"Whatever Nielsen says we do."
Bah!
- vrmbr0
evertime i see that mans face i want to kick little furry animals and handicapped grannies in their guts...
- kelpie0
he's easy to hate, but I agree with everything he says on that page and combined with a better aesthetic and good typography, his "rules" for designing working e-com or information based sites are totally valid and useful reminders.
too many designers get defensive when his chat comes up, but fuck would I hate to actually have to use some of their stuff if they are so scared of someone pointing out where they should hold back on teh "innovation" and design masturbation and focus on the user.
- kelpie0
Disclaimer:
a lot of the more campaign based experiential sites people round here do do not come under the banner of his criticism and I doubt he would put them there himself. These make up for the extra investment a user has to put into them by making the experience the reward in itself, but that can 99.999% of the time not apply to something like a news based or product based site.
- BaskerviIle0
Practise what you preach.
He needs to prove he understands things like hierarchy of information.
He also needs to accept that the web has moved on from its infancy in the 90s and that now the web has to adhere to the same rules of design that print design does.I agree that a large proportion of websites have poor usability but you'll be hard pushed to find one that has worse usability than his!
- moth0
Normally you're on point BaskerviIle - but web design does not have to adhere to the same rules of design as print design.
That's just balmy.