Jakob Nielsen, the man in a polyester suit
Unfortunately, I have to say, Jakob has perhaps the worst site design I have ever seen. It is as if, while he is handing out the Oscars, he is wearing a plaid polyester suit. In truth his site is fine from an information architecture perspective. But from an aesthetics perspective it is awful. And aesthetics is important in UI. If you begin to look at something and want to avert your eyes, the site has failed.
I could make mine every word of this blog post by Hank Williams (found via Daring Fireball), especially the funny quote that you could read above. I also do respect the work of Jakob Nielsen, despite the ugliness of his site and the funny corporate pictures on it.
The point is still, the layout and typography of your site do have an impact on its usability. The alertbox is a good example of an unreadable webpage, a huge list with no spacing whatsoever that makes the page confusing. Makes me wonder if our usability doctor has made any usability test on his own website…












lol! I was half hoping to see Pictures of Jakob Nielsen in a polyester suit. I completely agree though, the guy is very confusing, and so is his website. He talks a lot of sense sometimes, but its hard to take a man seriously when his website looks like that.
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I’ve heard somewhere that Nielsen is a pureist, wants the design on pages to be build only with the most basic html tags.
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@liam
hehe sorry to disappoint you with my misleading title…
@Andreas
I guess he is, it’s just too pure and sad for my taste.
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Why don’t U have some Colour on yer site?
IBM Dullard Grey isn’t exactly FUN!!
Kick it Up a Notch*********
let’s see at least da Wild n Zany Plaid Colourz of Jakob’s Polyester suit*
;)) Peace*
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@BillyWarhol
Well… I wasn’t mentioning the colours of Jakob Nielsen’s site, but the layout and typography of it. Anyway I’ll think about making my blog more… “fun”.
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[...] in web design. His site is a time-machine to 1995, and while perfectly accessible has attracted some justifiable criticism for its nauseating [...]
[...] in web design. His site is a time-machine to 1995, and while perfectly accessible has attracted some justifiable criticism for its nauseating [...]
[...] in web design. His site is a time-machine to 1995, and while perfectly accessible has attracted some justifiable criticism for its nauseating [...]