Synopses & Reviews
Look at the Web as you've never seen it before, through the eyes of the average user.
Users experience the usability of a site before they have committed to using it and before they have spent any money on potential purchases. The Web is the ultimate environment for empowerment. He or she who clicks the mouse decides everything.
In this landmark design reference, the world's acknowledged authority on Web usability, Jakob Nielsen, shares with you the full weight of his wisdom and experience. From content and page design to designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities, Jakob Nielsen delivers complete direction on how to connect with any Web user, in any situation.
Topics include:
* Site Design: home pages, navigation, search capabilities
* Page Design: cross-platform design, response times, linking, frames
* Content Design: writing for comprehension, writing with credibility, using artwork/photos, audio and video, animation, multimedia
* Intranet Design: information infrastructures, employee productivity, extranets
* Designing for Users with Disabilities: visual, auditory, speech, motor, cognitive, assistive technologies
* Designing for an International Audience: translations, multilingual sites, regional/cultural differences
* Where the Web is Headed: options for the future including information applicances, Web browsers, restructuring the media space
* What visitors respond to, and how they respond to it
Review
"A book may seem like a terribly old-fashioned way to learn how to function in the New Economy. But if you have dreams of making your, or your company's fortune through e-commerce, you'll want to take the time to peruse Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen." Stephen H. Wildstrom, Business Week online
Review
"Formerly of Sun Microsystems, Jakob Nielsen knows more about what makes Web sites work than anyone else on the planet. A longtime usability guru, he uses the construction of easy-to-use-and-navigate Web sites as the springboard for an evaluation of what customers like, what they dont, and how to create products and services that people need and want." Jimmy Guterman, Chicago Tribune
Review
"Jakob Nielsen has taken the study of how people use the web to its ultimate exploitation, making himself the defacto authority on web usability. His latest work Designing Web Usability should be on the desks of everyone who develops web pagesnoI take that back. It should be studiedtheir biblebecause the world spouts buckets of hype for flash and stream, the success of the web site still boils down to who uses it and how much. Without usability few site visitors get much further than the door. Jakob Nielsen has written the book I've been praying someone would write for over half a decade." DT&G Magazine
Synopsis
Users experience the usability of a web site before they have committed to using it and before making any purchase decisions. The web is the ultimate environment for empowerment, and he or she who clicks the mouse decides everything. Designing Web Usability is the definitive guide to usability from Jakob Nielsen, the world's leading authority. Over 250,000 Internet professionals around the world have turned to this landmark book, in which Nielsen shares the full weight of his wisdom and experience. From content and page design to designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities, he delivers complete direction on how to connect with any web user, in any situation. Nielsen has arrived at a series of principles that work in support of his findings: 1. That web users want to find what they're after quickly; 2. If they don't know what they're after, they nevertheless want to browse quickly and access information they come across in a logical manner. This book is a must-have for anyone who thinks seriously about the web.
About the Author
Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D. is a User Advocate specializing in web usability and a principal of Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup. com), which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman, former vice president of Apple Research. Until 1998, Dr. Nielsen was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer and led that company's web usability efforts starting with the original design of SunWeb in early 1994. His previous affiliations include the IBM User Interface Institute, Bell Communications Research, and the Technical University of Denmark. Nielsen is the author and editor of 8 other books and more than 75 research papers on usability engineering, user interface design, and hypertext. He is also a frequent keynote presenter at industry conferences. Nielsen is the founder of the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and simple ways of improving user interfaces. Nielsen's Alertbox column about web usability has been published on the Internet since 1995 (http://www.useit.com/alertbox) and currently has about 100,000 readers. He is also the usability columnist for Ziff-Davis Network's DevHead and a web design critic for Internet World magazine. He holds 46 U.S. patents, mainly on ways to make the Internet easier to use. Dr. Nielsen's website is at http://www.useit.com: It's text-only and pretty fast.
Table of Contents
Preface.
1. Introduction: Why Web Usability?
2. Page Design.
3. Content Design.
4. Site Design.
5. Intranet Design.
6. Accessibility for Users with Disabilities.
7. International Use: Serving A Global Audience.
8. Future Predictions: The Only Web Constant Is Change.
9. Conclusion: Simplicity in Web Design.
Recommended Readings.
Index.