By Jakob Nielsen
Review by: Alex
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Usability is often the most underestimated and unknown of the arts of website design and development. Usability deals with making your website as simple to users as possible, this means making sure that anyone can use your website, no matter what level of computing knowledge they have and making sure your website maintains certain "defaults" such as keeping the logo in the top left hand corner where it belongs and making sure the search box is available and easily visible. This art takes its rules from user testing (though is not an exact science) which has been taken over the years to show trends of user activity (and therefore involves a certain amount of psychology), the great thing about usability is that it removes un-needed frustration from the user and will make sure your website is everything it can be. Now on to the book... One of the most controvercial books of the web design community was the release of this very book, one of the most well known publishers and protectors of the world of usability is that of Jakob Nielsen. Someone who for many years has been trying to promote and improve usability standards. Ahead of its time the book shocked and caused a rift amongst the internet community showing that usability was very important in website design and needed to be taken seriously. Even today though it is a little outdated (and the cover seems to get dirty very quickly) the book is still considered by many as the most detailed and best resource on web usability around, if any book deserves to be given the title as the "Bible" of usability standards, this book is it... in all its glowing glory. The book covers every possible element of usability designing and even brings in elements of accessibility which should be taken into account and for anyone wanting to know anything about the wonderful world of usability, this book is a firm favourite. This is something that everyone involved in website design and development should have on their shelves.
The chapters of this book include the following... Chapter 1 is the introduction of the book and explains why web usability should be used in everyday website design. Chapter 2 then kicks in the start of the individual sections of usability engineering and shows you how to achieve usability in page design. Chapter 3 then carries on the journey by looking at the design of content and how usability can be implicated and any issues can be resolved. Chapter 4 takes a look at site design in general and explains usability in relation to this specific area of development. Chapter 5 then takes what was taken from the previous chapter and explains how intranet design is affected by usability issues. Chapter 6 then detours slightly from usability and heads into the region of accessibility and how making your website accessible for people with disabilities can also boost your usability ratings. Chapter 7 shows how serving a global audience can affect usability within your website and how to make your website usable for international users. Chapter 8 then takes a look at the future of what Jakob Nielsen believes will be important in the future (this chapter unfortunately is outdated and shows specific targets which have not been met over history) though his ideas are an interesting point of view and Chapter 9 then concludes the book by explaining how simplicity in website design is important in maintaining usability standards.
This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:
- Website designers who want to make their website simple enough for anyone to be able to use.
- People who apply accessibility to their websites but have not yet looked at usability standards.
- Designers and developers who want to make the user’s trip to your site as relaxing as possible.