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In the article The Internet Desktop, Nielsen states:

"Fundamentally, it is pretty silly to have a special browser for certain information objects simply because they happen to come from a specific storage location. There is no reason to treat information differently because it comes from the Internet instead of coming from your harddisk."

I've always been curious about this mindset. Generally, information on the internet is in the form of HTML or text files, and any other files need to be copied to a local location before being usable (Causing a long wait time, breaking any illusions of transparency). Internet files are also generally organized by someone who has an eye towards both navigation and graphical prettiness. The majority of the information is contained in the connections between various files, allowing for quick movements to different spots (in well-designed sites, of course)

Local files, on the other hand, are created using many different types of programs, and require a seperate application to view more often than web information does. Local information is being created by a single user for specialized use, with little view towards the overall structure of the filesystem. Information is usually contained within single files, with little relation to other files other than basic categories in directories.

Why, then, is there this idea that the same tool should be used for both types of information? I typically use a web browser for viewing HTML files: it lets me click the links that someone else has set up to ease my movement, applies the format the web author created, and gives me an interface for the time-consuming file download. Why should this be integrated with the program I use to navigate a directory tree of files that do not have links, lack an html format, and do not need to be downloaded from an incredibly slow resource to be used? And, what kind of justification is there for NOT splitting up access of a resource with millisecond responses from one with responses that can range all the way to hours?

It seems to me then, that it's essential UI for sites to display when referred to without the WWW prefix. Many, including UseIt.Com do not. See http://useit.com.

Do you agree?

If poor web design can be so clearly explained to the average educated user (e.g. myself), then why are there still so many badly designed websites around, many of these the result of huge expenditure? Will things get better or worse?

If poor web design can be so clearly explained to the average educated user (e.g. myself), then why are there still so many badly designed websites around, many of these the result of huge expenditure? Will things get better or worse?

Much attention is given to usability in GUIs and websites, (such as in your column Novice vs. Expert Users) but what about textmode and primarily keyboard applications such as text editors? Personally, i believe that Emacs has the best user interface of any text editor i've ever used (vi's a close second, calm down people :), but it's geared towards experts. What do you see for the future with regard to synthesizing novice usability and expert usability? the "smart menus" as seen in MS Office 2000 seem to head in that direction, only showing basic options unless an expansion button is pressed at the bottom of the menu. The best touch is that it "remembers" what you last used from the full menu and puts it on the basic menu. How can we smooth the curve?

Something that's been bugging me for a long time: http://useit.com/ doesn't work as a URL, one is forced to enter http://www.useit.com/. It seems to me that the ability to drop the "www." from the front of URLs is a widely accepted convention- considering the title of Nielsen's website leaves it out as well, I was wondering why this isn't taken care of, if it's a technical glitch or some kind of design decision.

Something that's been bugging me for a long time: http://useit.com/ doesn't work as a URL, one is forced to enter http://www.useit.com/. It seems to me that the ability to drop the "www." from the front of URLs is a widely accepted convention- considering the title of Nielsen's website leaves it out as well, I was wondering why this isn't taken care of, if it's a technical glitch or some kind of design decision.

From a user perspective life would be simplified. If you download a particualr graphic format it would automatically be placed in the correct directory to be "seen" by the correct graphics program.

"Simplified" only for those users who expect their image files to be stored in one location, rather than having their family pictures for the grandparents stored in one place, the pictures from last year's vacation in another place, their pr0n in another place, etc..

However, I don't file physical documents based solely on whether they're letters or pictures or financial reports or...; I file them primarily based on what they pertain to. And sometimes that even changes - reports from financial accounts may move from a folder for the financial account to a folder for a particular year's income taxes when tax time comes around, for example.

Now, if the location - in the sense of "the directory in which the files are placed" - is invisible to the user, e.g. a system where you can ask "where are all the pictures of my family" or "where are the pictures I took from my vacation last year" or..., it might work as an implementation detail.

I didn't come up with the notion of "directory trees as implementation detail, rather than end-user metaphor" on my own; others have suggested that a hierarchical directory structure might not be the best way to show a user the organization of their files. See, for example, Jakob Neilsen's The Death of File Systems paper, in which he says:

Relax, oh Nerdy Reader: I am not going to take away your beloved file-system APIs. Here I am talking about what the user experiences, not how we provide that experience. The file system has been a trusted part of most computers for many years, and will likely continue as such in operating systems for many more. However, several emerging trends in user interfaces indicate that the basic file-system model is inadequate to fully satisfy the needs of new users, despite the flexibility of the underlying code and data structures.

There is no need for users to know how their information is stored inside the guts of the computer. Indeed, the notion of a continuous file is itself an abstraction: It masks the fact that the information is normally stored on noncontiguous sectors of the hard disk. From a user perspective, current file systems are based on three assumptions:

• Information is partitioned into coherent and disjunct units, each of which is treated as a separate object (file). Users typically manipulate information using a file and are restricted to be "in" one file at a time.
• Information objects are classified according to a single hierarchy: the subdirectory structure.
• Each information object is given a single, semiunique name, which is fixed. This file name is the main way users access information inside the object.

Window systems have made these assumptions less intolerable, but they still exist. Modern computing, particularly the Internet, is further undermining these assumptions in several ways.

It covers some problems with the Stanford study, and what questions we should be asking.

Jacob Nielson makes some interesting points on these "loneliness surveys" in his latest alertbox article. One particularly good point is the fact that the web has helped to integrate one's professional life with one's private life, and that perhaps such compartmentalization is worth re-thinking.

Jacob Nielson makes some interesting points on these "loneliness surveys" in his latest alertbox article. One particularly good point is the fact that the web has helped to integrate one's professional life with one's private life, and that perhaps such compartmentalization is worth re-thinking.

I can't beleive it! The best question (the last one) in the world got completely blown off!

Algore2000 is a good site.
Well, that's a good start. I like this guy already.
Why does algore2000.com seem to think I'm a fool?
Hmmmmm. Sounds like he changed his mind. Uh-oh.
Nearly all the "content" of algore2000.com is fluff.
I disagree.

That's IT? Gee, the webmaster doesn't like a critique of his site, and came off as a condesending fool to boot. I'm shocked.

Mr. Green, I would refer you to UseIT's "Alertbox" section. Among those essays, you'll find a recurring theme; people want to be able to find all of the information they can handle.

You might also want to check out the cluetrain as well; even though it's more aimed at businesses, I think the moral is the same; we're not "demographics", we're not "lobbies", we're not "PACs" or "special interests"; we're your neighbors, the parents of the kids your kids go to school with, the people who bag your groceries, the tellers at your bank.

Sure, you can target the "average American", but what you (or the candidate you work for, at any rate) and the other politicians forget is that a good portion of web surfers and internet users are more intelligent, inquisitive, and interested in politics than the "average American".

Why did Jesse Ventura win the gubenatorial election using a 'net-based campaign? Because, from the accounts I've seen, he used his web site and his mailing list to actually talk to the people that ended up putting him into office. Mr. Ventura (or his 'net handler, at any rate) made sure that people who were interested in him and wanted to help out got the information they wanted -- not what Mr. Ventura or his PR flacks or spin doctors thought they wanted -- when they needed it.

Algore2000.com is, in essence, a bigger, better, multimedia-enabled campaign pamphlet; nothing more, nothing less. And Americans (this one, at any rate) are getting tired of all of the rhetoric, the "business as usual" -- even if the BAU is served over a modem rather than stuck in my mailbox or blasted through a 30-second spot during "Frazier".

When Mr.Gore or Mr. Bradley or Mr. McCain or Mr. Bush or Mr. Third Party has something to say to me as opposed to "the average American", I'll be listening. But I won't be holding my breath.

Jay (=

Jakob Neilsen has some interesting stuff on his Web site, such as his Death of File Systems paper, on why he thinks that the hierarchical directory tree model isn't necessarily what you want to expose to the end user; there's also a paper by him and Don Gentner, Anti-Mac, with thoughts on what a different-and-possibly-better user interface might look like.

Jakob Neilsen has some interesting stuff on his Web site, such as his Death of File Systems paper, on why he thinks that the hierarchical directory tree model isn't necessarily what you want to expose to the end user; there's also a paper by him and Don Gentner, Anti-Mac, with thoughts on what a different-and-possibly-better user interface might look like.

Jakob Nielsen has published a book Design Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity.

This has apparently topped Amazon's best selling computing books since early January.

and for more reasons than just accesibility. Using lots of images, flash, javascript, etc . . . does nothing but slow down pages and make them a pain in the ass to view for people without IE 5/Netscape 4. Take a look at Jakob Nielsen's site for lots of info on web usability in general.

On my own personal site, I use primarily static HTML with some frames. All of my navigational/title graphics have alt tags, and I refuse to use platform specific plugins like flash. I also preview each new page at 640x480 in both IE & navigator on win and linux before I post them to make sure everything is readable. While this layout may not be very flashy or modern (layout has not changed drastically since I started the site in 95), it is functional and fast.

As a counter example, I recently helped my sister (a graphic design major) put a site on line. She used dreamweaver to build her site. Dreamweaver created the entire site in images and flash! Even the text was created as images! Unbelievably slow and inefficient.

Reading Jakob Nielsen's "Why Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web" might be fruitful.

You'd think the Electronic Telegraphers would have heard about Web Usability Research (Alertbox July 1999).

Bad studies rate advertising on the web as good for branding. They ask the user to look at websites they wouldn't normally look at, and with no purpose beyond "evaluating" them. The bored user looks at the most interesting thing on the page: the banner advertisements.

Good studies give people access to the web and let people screw around and do whatever they want (or at least give them realistic tasks to perform), while tracking which ads were viewed. The result: web surfers never even look at ads, unless they are really bored or the ads are cleverly disguised in a form the viewer hasn't seen. Believe the data.

Claiming that because studies disagree they are, as a whole, inconclusive is a well known logical fallasy (the name of which escapes me).

There are lots of internet ad-based businesses coming out now, but I don't think they're going to hang around a lot longer. People just don't look at internet ads, and very rarely do they click on them. There is some chance of making money at it with a website that is cheap to run and has thousands and thousands of visitors per month, but there is no way is this advertising worth the cost of running and supporting an internet provider. Advertisers will learn this sooner or later.

Follow this link for a good article on this.

todays X WM's philosophy is that who knows better what kind of UI works better for you then YOU?

A competent user interface engineer will know better than you what kind of UI works. But don't take my word for it - read Jakob Nielsen's article about the conflict between usability and appearance, and pay special attention to the fact that the best-looking design during initial testing sucked the most for usability.

A user-programmer is far more likely to deliver something useful in practice rather than something primarily useful in theory.

Nothing theoretical about it.

Popup a heirarchical menu in Gnome, then try to move to an item in a submenu that is below and to the right. You have to do some intricate threading the needle to get the cursor to exit the main menu exactly at the point where the arrow points to the sub menu. With a Mac, I can select the main item, then move my mouse down diagonally directly to the subitem. Missing the subitem more than once on a non-Mac system gets old very fast. And how about some built-in hysteresis? If I move the mouse along that menu very fast, every submenu pops up. The Mac has a built-in timer so that fast cursor moves do not cause that annoying flashing.

For references on why interface is important, see MacKido, Jakob Neilsen or Tognazzi's website.

Remember, bad interface killed John Denver.

I don't think there needs to be a standard user interface per se, but there is a need for standards on user interface behavior.

I agree. The Web blew the then current notion of consistent UI out of the water. Of course, having some level of consistency is important, even with Web sites. But the fact that now Apple, once the torch bearer of consistent UI standards, is distributing the non-standard QuickTime UI, makes it pretty clear that some variability is acceptable.

We don't need more applications... We need better applications. Instead of saying, "I want to write my own web browser," why not contribute to Mozilla instead? Instead of writing "Yet Another MP3 Player," contribute code to one of the more established ones.

You're missing the point on how Open Source software development produces better software. If you think in terms of evolution or "software Darwinism", then the variety of 30 competing projects is a good thing. Instant Messaging on Linux is still a new niche where a lot of experimentation is going on. Eventually, things will settle down and a few successful clients will emerge. If projects like Jabber are any indication, then the end result is going to be software that is better than commercial alternatives...a common theme with OS software.

You do highlight an important challenge: developing reputation managers for Open Source. Something like Epinions.com, but geared to our community. Something to help you seperate the wheat from the chaff.

When using freshmeat, I usually have to scan several entries. By looking at their various summaries, Web pages, and frequently by trying out a few packages, I filter out the projects that don't seem to be very well supported. This usually works, but it is time consuming, and doesn't take advantage of the fact that someone else with similar interests as mine probably just did the same thing a week ago. Collaborative Filtering, which is just a form of reputation management, would come in real handy. In fact, I'd be suprised if FreshMeat wasn't already working on this.

One of the better summaries is Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time), one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns. He's revised his opinions a couple of times since the original (it was written in December of 1996), but still holds to them; check out his "Top Ten Mistakes" Revisited column, for example.

I strongly recommend his entire site, which is full of advice on various web design and usability issues. You may not agree with all of them (I'm not sure I agree with him about scrolling web pages), but I've found the issues he raises all worth thinking about.

One of the better summaries is Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time), one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns. He's revised his opinions a couple of times since the original (it was written in December of 1996), but still holds to them; check out his "Top Ten Mistakes" Revisited column, for example.

I strongly recommend his entire site, which is full of advice on various web design and usability issues. You may not agree with all of them (I'm not sure I agree with him about scrolling web pages), but I've found the issues he raises all worth thinking about.

One of the better summaries is Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time), one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns. He's revised his opinions a couple of times since the original (it was written in December of 1996), but still holds to them; check out his "Top Ten Mistakes" Revisited column, for example.

I strongly recommend his entire site, which is full of advice on various web design and usability issues. You may not agree with all of them (I'm not sure I agree with him about scrolling web pages), but I've found the issues he raises all worth thinking about.

One of the better summaries is Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time), one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns. He's revised his opinions a couple of times since the original (it was written in December of 1996), but still holds to them; check out his "Top Ten Mistakes" Revisited column, for example.

I strongly recommend his entire site, which is full of advice on various web design and usability issues. You may not agree with all of them (I'm not sure I agree with him about scrolling web pages), but I've found the issues he raises all worth thinking about.

The same principle holds true for many new websites as well. I personally and professionally gain more in depth or even entertaining knowledge from content derived from and for a specific group of people.

As a set of examples look at Terry Sullivan's "All Things Web", Jakob Nielson's "UseIt Dot Com" or my own "ULCJ".

All three of those and countless billions are written with no commercial influence, as a result they tend to be more informative and less biased (unless personally). Most magazines, however, cannot say the same - and note I am referring to magazines, many trade journals are perfectly legit (while others sponsered by a product may not be).

Jakob Nielsen's article on Metcalfe's Law offers good insight on why the segregation of different AIM clients is a bad thing, and reduces the potential value of the network.

Metcalfe's Law states that "the value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network".

Reversing this law provides:

The value of partitioning a network into N isolated components is 1/N'th the value of the original network.

This new law follows directly from the original Metcalfe's Law. Each of the new components has a size of 1/N'th the size of the original network. Thus, its value is 1/(N[squared]) of the original value. At the same time, there are N of these new mini-networks, so the over-all value is N * 1/(N[squared]) = 1/N

Note to Rob: We need SUB and SUP tags allowed in /.

I'd suggest a read of Jakob Nielsen's column on writing microcontent. Some useful snippets:

Online headlines are often displayed out of context: as part of a list of articles, in an email program's list of incoming messages, in a search engine hitlist, or in a browser's bookmark menu or other navigation aid. Some of these situations are very out of context: search engine hits can relate to any random topic, so users don't get the benefit of applying background understanding to the interpretation of the headline.

Even when a headline is displayed together with related content, the difficulty of reading online and the reduced amount of information that can be seen in a glance make it harder for users to learn enough from the surrounding data. In print, a headline is tightly associated with photos, decks, subheads, and the full body of the article, all of which can be interpreted in a single glance. Online, a much smaller amount of information will be visible in the window, and even that information is harder and more unpleasant to read, so people often don't do so. While scanning the list of stories on a site like news.com, users often only look at the highlighted headlines and skip most of the summaries.

Also, the impact of good headlines can be seen in this article on the cost of poor information on intranets, but is relevant to anything that has a large number of readers -- though the economics aren't as direct.

Consider, for example, the impact of violating the guidelines for microcontent authoring in writing the headline for a news item on an intranet home page. For a company with 10,000 employees, the cost of a single poorly written headline on an intranet home page is almost $5,000. Considerably more than the cost of having a good home page editor rewrite the headline before it goes up.

If Hemos spends 5 extra minutes writing a clear, concise headline, and that saves 10,000 slashdot readers 5 seconds of scanning and thinking each, then that's a gain of 49,700 seconds for the /. community.

I'd suggest a read of Jakob Nielsen's column on writing microcontent. Some useful snippets:

Online headlines are often displayed out of context: as part of a list of articles, in an email program's list of incoming messages, in a search engine hitlist, or in a browser's bookmark menu or other navigation aid. Some of these situations are very out of context: search engine hits can relate to any random topic, so users don't get the benefit of applying background understanding to the interpretation of the headline.

Even when a headline is displayed together with related content, the difficulty of reading online and the reduced amount of information that can be seen in a glance make it harder for users to learn enough from the surrounding data. In print, a headline is tightly associated with photos, decks, subheads, and the full body of the article, all of which can be interpreted in a single glance. Online, a much smaller amount of information will be visible in the window, and even that information is harder and more unpleasant to read, so people often don't do so. While scanning the list of stories on a site like news.com, users often only look at the highlighted headlines and skip most of the summaries.

Also, the impact of good headlines can be seen in this article on the cost of poor information on intranets, but is relevant to anything that has a large number of readers -- though the economics aren't as direct.

Consider, for example, the impact of violating the guidelines for microcontent authoring in writing the headline for a news item on an intranet home page. For a company with 10,000 employees, the cost of a single poorly written headline on an intranet home page is almost $5,000. Considerably more than the cost of having a good home page editor rewrite the headline before it goes up.

If Hemos spends 5 extra minutes writing a clear, concise headline, and that saves 10,000 slashdot readers 5 seconds of scanning and thinking each, then that's a gain of 49,700 seconds for the /. community.

Advertising in general is not effective on the web. Click through rates are declining, and there is research that shows that users' eyes don't even track to the banner ads. Advertising is a losing proposition in the long run. See www.useit.com

ASPs are a good idea, but they won't kill off local applications completely. There are a number of reasons why:

• Security. Would you entrust confidential corporate communications to a Hotmail account? OK, now ask yourself if you would entrust the spreadsheet with all the juicy details of your Top Secret business plan to MSExcel.com.
• Usability. Just about every web-based application suffers from having to use HTML as a front-end. HTML is great but it is NOT the One True User Interface to Everything -- it's optimized for browsing hypertext, not word-processing or spreadsheet navigation. See Jakob Neilsen's excellent Alertbox column on this subject for more detail.
• Performance. Most people are still accessing the Web through modem connections. This makes it difficult to supply data-intensive applications online, and it also adds the extra burden of having to log on to get to your application (which, unlike installing new software, is not a one-time annoyance).

The article claims that Microsoft is developing a version of Office that would work over the web. Suuuure. Microsoft always claims to have a version of its products in the pipeline that works with whatever the buzzword of the moment is (remember Windows for Pen Computing?). They do this to look like they're on top of developments in the industry and to scare off potential challengers, not to develop killer apps for new technologies. Besides, if all applications were Web-based, Microsoft's desktop monopoly would be meaningless, and we all know how seriously they take THAT.

So, maybe in a few years, when bandwidth improves and security improves and some other things improve, ASPs will be universal. But for now they're better for niche applications than they are for general use -- they're just not ready for prime time yet.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz

For starters, there's Lynx. That browser have been with us for a looooooong time. It also gives a good representation of what a web site looks to a person with a braille-enabled browser, or a browser that uses speech synthesis. You also get a quick indication of how your site will "look" when a search engine's robot comes by. If site authors used Lynx more they'd probably figure out what all this fuzz is about.

There's also several resources available regarding accessibility on the web. The HTML 4.0 spec has quite a lot of information regarding how to make your site accessible for everyone, not only those with a graphical browser. With CSS level 2 you have "aural style sheets" which enables you to suggest presentational information for users with speech-synthesis. Add to that the Web Accessibility Intiative and Jacob Nielsen's Accessible Design for users with disabilities.

Usability for other people than those with graphical browsers has been around for years (that Nielsen-article is old). But when you look at people's attitude there's no wonder why sites look like they do. Nobody gives a damn anyway... I think that's scary.

But, even though this has been a case for quite a while it doesn't mean I believe that the blind can sue AOL. As others have mentioned, if AOL hasn't gone out saying it's accessible to the blind they, in my opinion, don't have a case. They can ask AOL to create a site they can use, but they shouldn't be able to force AOL to do so. With the amount of publicity this gets AOL might feel it's good PR to create a site usable for the blind, maybe simply because they don't want to lose the case. In my opinion it's only the government and other official sites that should be required to be accessible to everyone.

The 'net is in my opinion well suited for being accessible for the blind. Provided they have the right aids mail, news, and to a certain extent, the web, is quite easy to use (since most of it is text). We shouldn't simply lock them out saying "this is a graphical medium, it wasn't ment for you" or anything like that.

I'm used to writing for clueless external clients, who tend to simply skim what I write. I've found that if my points don't jump out at them, they tend to get skipped over, often times resulting in countless headaches for me. It seems to work very well for technical reviews (search for "Protocol Specifications Review" on the page), because the important data/points immediately draw your eye.

That being said, it is quite possible that I went overboard on my other post ;)

And as to the debate about the origin of that style of writing, I did read MAD Magazine a little too much as a kid, but more recently, I have been looking at Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox column.


In reply to the rest of your comment:
If you and your employers had any ethics you would not be collecting the data in the first place.
Thank (insert deity of choice) that I don't work for that company - my company is a web design/programming agency, and were hired by an external client to create the site. I may have exaggerated the evilness of the client - parents (if they read the permission statement) are informed that their child may be contacted from time to time to participate in optional surveys. The client is actually a well respected polling company based in Rochester, NY, and they usually pretty straight up about things (other than a number of the employees being relatively clueless, but that's another rant...).



Moderator: Please mark this down as off topic.


Scott Severtson
Applications Developer

Sorry, that was meant to be Jakob Nielsen's essays (specially The AntiMac Interface) and Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line far more enlightening..

I find Jakob highly overrated (but still far better than this interface hall of shame). I consider Stephenson's essay an absolute must-read.

Alejo

I saw this some months ago. I found it rather superficial. First, it just covers applications that use the Windows widgets (well, perhaps MacOS too? I don't remember). As everybody knows, there are a LOT of different widget sets in the Unix world, where every program used to have it's own before Gnome/KDE. Also, some of the examples there are criticized as interface problems but are just plain bugs. For example, see the Netscape's Spelling Checking `interface problem' (a spell checker that suggest the word where it is reporting mispelled) or the `Error: The operation completed succesfully' window which we just know it's cause by a bug that thinks there was an error when there wasn't and then prints strerror o sys_errlist or whatever the equivalent of that in Windows is. Are those interface-design problems? (I pointed this to the author and he said he things so). Finally, I believe it has way too many examples but I'd like more analyzis. Some papers on interface design would be best. It just shows me many things I should't do (most are obvious) but does not tell me how to design a really good interface. I found Jakob Nielsen's and specially Neal Stephenson's essay on interfaces far more enlightening. Alejo.

A link to that very interesting site was posted in July 1998, so this is not really new for those who have been on /. for more than a year.

Several interesting links were posted among the replies to that story. I will re-post a few of them here, so that you do not have to browse through the old messages:

• useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website.
• Usable Web: Guide to Web usability resources
• MacKiDo/Interface: What is user interface, and what is superior (and why).
• User Interface Engineering

Follow these links if you are interested in user interfaces (mostly for GUI). There is no lack of good advice on the net. This makes me wonder why we still see so many bad user interfaces in the latest programs (even in GNOME and KDE).

If you're gonna pay x$ for a domain name, why can't you spend time putting up a decent site behind it?

Because ugly sites make more money... and anyways, many of the folks who have good domain names are just hanging on to them for the resale value.

If you send your website visitors off to Allclicks.com at 3 cents/click, you'll almost always make more money than you ever would with nice, useful content. Unfortunate, but that's just the way it is with the current economic model...

Slashdot was mentioned as one of the shining examples of 'Reputation Managers' by Jakob Nielson in his latest Alertbox column on USEIT.COM. In the article Nielson is basically saying that Reputation Management systems are up and coming ways of adding important value to the web. Only thing is, he has one rather pithy comment about useability on /. (he is, after all, a usability guru). Quote: "Unfortunately, the ability to filter out poorly rated comments is not turned on by default, so only diligent users who study the slightly confused user interface will discover this useful feature."

Personally I don't find the /. system that difficult to understand, but I do remember having some difficulty finding documentation on how to use the moderation/scoring/karma features. I know there is some stuff in the FAQ and all that, but a more formal set of documentation might be in order.

I know, I know. Documentation is always the last thing a programmer gets around to writing. But look at it this way, with /. being a continual work-in-progress there is little chance any one will get around to doing some simple 'man pages' for /. anytime soon unless it is made a priority.

Perhaps we users should take this task on for ourselves. No, I am not volunteering, or at least not to do all the work...

Jack

Slashdot was mentioned as one of the shining examples of 'Reputation Managers' by Jakob Nielson in his latest Alertbox column on USEIT.COM. In the article Nielson is basically saying that Reputation Management systems are up and coming ways of adding important value to the web. Only thing is, he has one rather pithy comment about useability on /. (he is, after all, a usability guru). Quote: "Unfortunately, the ability to filter out poorly rated comments is not turned on by default, so only diligent users who study the slightly confused user interface will discover this useful feature."

Personally I don't find the /. system that difficult to understand, but I do remember having some difficulty finding documentation on how to use the moderation/scoring/karma features. I know there is some stuff in the FAQ and all that, but a more formal set of documentation might be in order.

I know, I know. Documentation is always the last thing a programmer gets around to writing. But look at it this way, with /. being a continual work-in-progress there is little chance any one will get around to doing some simple 'man pages' for /. anytime soon unless it is made a priority.

Perhaps we users should take this task on for ourselves. No, I am not volunteering, or at least not to do all the work...

Jack

The most recent issue of Jakob Nielsen's excellent Alertbox column about web usability is about reputation management. It even mentions slashdot!

The most recent issue of Jakob Nielsen's excellent Alertbox column about web usability is about reputation management. It even mentions slashdot!

I think there will be a division in the Internet of the future.

Which would be a bad thing; Jakob Neilsen's article on "Metcalfe's law in Reverse" suggests "the value of partitioning a network into N isolated components is 1/N'th the value of the original network."

You'll have the current structure, which will consist of homogenized "Appropriate for viewers of all ages" tripe and dominated by commercial entities. Then you'll have an underground Internet which will be built by people who have left all that behind in disgust.

Which, unfortunately, won't be as many people as we hope.

This Internet will either run on top of the current internet in the form of an invitation-only VPN (Quite feasible with the higher speed lines becoming available) or done with dial-up hardware of various sorts (Possibly even store-and-forward only.) Being effectively a private entity, it will be beyond regulation of the ISP's.

I see two problems with this:

• The "anything goes" side of the net will become categorized as a "haven for pornography and trash" and stigmatized. ("Ew! Your website is from that side of the tracks?")
• If I end up on this "anything goes" side of the internet due to my refusal to rate any of my sites, will I be able to link to stuff on the "kiddie-net"? Will they be able to link to me?

Here's more of the "chilling effect on free speech" at work; since many people want to reach the widest possible audience, they will elect to rate their sites -- and therefore, want to strive for that PG rating to get past all of the filters.

Jay (=

Wow, what a chock full-o-^$%! site.

It's pretty, but in terms of actually using it - I'd much prefer sites like Slashdot, which while not paragons of aesthetic vision, are easy to use. Jakob Neilsen's Useit.com is a good example of a site with no graphics, but easy to use. It also is a great resource for web designers, and should be in their bookmarks.

Sorry Jon, nothing really innovative here.

Not to mention the site uses frames and seems to have no alternate text at all.

Graphic-intensive web sites are bad enough, but without alternate text they are broken. Some people actually turn off graphics or use text-based browsers in the real world, you know. And did I mention the site uses frames and doesn't seem to have any real need to?

At least the site didn't require me to turn JavaScript on like some other poorly-designed web sites do.
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True, I have a slow connection. Funny, though, how other sites like Yahoo or photo.net have snappy performance on the same Internet connection.. :-)

Please see Jacob Nielsen's The Need for Speed. As the Internet grows, the mean bandwidth per user decreases. Most new users are using modems, not T-1s. Web sites should design for the common case and minimize response time.

What it means is that there are a very small number of sites that get a very large amount of attention/hits/bandwidth, a medium number getting a medium amount, and a very large number getting a very small amount.

Zipf's law is seen in a number of facets of Web traffic, both within a site and across the Web (such as site popularity). When you take into account the nature of Zipf curves, it's not surprising that they're seeing more traffic on the high end; in the scale of things, this is just a blip.

Jakob Neilson has a good intro to zipf's law in regard to Web traffic: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/zipf.html

What version of Windows is mindslip using? I've always found Mac OS applications to be a thousand times more consistent than Windows applications. Maybe he's just talking about MS Office, though, which apparently will be part of Windows soon enough.

And Microsoft spending money on usability and human interface testing? Puh-leaze! Apple wrote human interface guidelines back in the mid-80s before Windows even existed. Microsoft simply copied the Mac's GUI, and did a poor job of it at that. Windows 95 and 98 were much better than 3.1 (and even added a few features that Mac users envied and eventually copied), but 'consistent interface' are not words I'd use to describe any version Windows or its various applications.

More research needs to be done for human interface guidelines and usability in general, though. Neither X nor Mac OS nor Windows is anywhere close to the ultimate GUI.

See Jakob Nielsen's book, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency and his Alertbox column for May 1997 titled "Web Design vs. GUI Design" for more talk about user interface design. The Anti-Mac paper is also interesting reading.