Jakob Nielsen

I have mixed feelings about Jakob Nielsen.

On the one hand, he’s fabulously famous (for an HCI practitioner, anyway). People who can barely spell usability are still quite likely to know the name and may even be subscribers to his Alertbox newsletter. He’s also basically sound. That is, the advice he gives is pretty much in line with what most of us would offer our clients. And, hugely to his credit, he is a great promoter of the idea that designers should base their decisions on evidence, gathered from real users.

On the other hand, the evidence he gathers is hardly what you’d call scientific. In fact, he is a good example of how people in HCI get away with abysmally low standards of evidence for their claims. There is no sign of rigorous experimental design or procedure in his reports, and the merest, occasional nod in the direction of hypothesis testing, replication and peer review. This is where his popularity becomes a problem.

It has happened a few times to me in recent years that I have had a design decision challenged on the basis that ‘last month’s Alertbox said…’ which then kicks off an hour-long discussion about the contingent nature of research findings, the need for proper hypotheses, the need for controls, other evidence from more reliable sources, the special circumstances of our own user, task, technology mix, and so on and so on. Not that I really mind having these conversations – it’s not often you get a chance to convince your client that you really do think about what you’re doing – it just bothers me that most people who read Nielsen take it as usability gospel, not just one man’s particular experiences.

I’m sure Nielsen would be the first to agree that blind faith in his pronouncements is a bad thing – but I suspect he might argue it’s not so much of a bad thing as not reading any usability guidelines at all. And, given that he is, after all, on the side of the angels, and he is, on the whole, pretty sound, I suppose I’d have to agree. Besides, the guy is a businessman with a living to make, and that no doubt involves presenting his slightly dubious evidence as rather more authoritative-sounding than it really is. So there is no point expecting him to qualify everything he says the way a scientist would.

Still, it makes me uneasy. The whole field is dogged by what amounts to anecdotal evidence being passed off as serious research. There is almost nothing in the way of solid theory in HCI and nobody seems to think this is a problem. Essentially that makes us a collection of craftspeople – not even engineers, and certainly not scientists. And the field is full of ‘gurus’ whose advice comes mostly from personal experience and not from good research.

Oddly enough, his business partner, Donald Norman, is someone I have considerable respect for and who has made some (of the very few) significant contributions in our meagre attempts to develop HCI theory.