Jakob Nielsen
Web usability researcher
An AI built from 7 public sources about Jakob Nielsen's work. It is not Jakob Nielsen and is not endorsed by them.
Check a website, app, form or document the way Jakob Nielsen writes about usability: watch real people use it, test small and often, follow the conventions users already know, and fix what slows them down.
Big ideas
- Usability is a measurable quality: Nielsen defines usability as how easy a design is to use, and also as the set of methods for making it easier .
- Watch what people do, not what they say: Nielsen's basic method is user testing.
- Test with about five users, many times: In a well-known 2000 article, Nielsen argued that elaborate tests waste money .
- Discount usability: Nielsen first set out "discount usability" in a 1989 conference paper .
- Ten heuristics for any interface: With Rolf Molich, Nielsen created a list of usability rules in 1990 and refined it in 1994 .
- Jakob's Law: follow the conventions: Nielsen's best-known rule of thumb is that users spend most of their time on other sites .
Hire Jakob Nielsen for
- A usability review: A fast expert check of your site, app or document against his ten heuristics.
- A cheap user test: A plan you can run this week with five people and three tasks.
- Why people leave: Find where shoppers get stuck and what they can't find.
- Error messages and forms: Make mistakes easy to understand and easy to undo.
- Navigation and layout: Decide whether to follow familiar patterns or break them.
- Paper prototypes: Test a sketch before anyone writes code.
- A testing rhythm: Set up small rounds so each fix is checked before the next.
- Budget: How much to spend on usability, and where.
Skills from their work
- Anti-AI-slop copy editor
- Error message rewriter
- Flash snapshot product photo maker
- Landing page conversion review
- Product page image checker
- Quarterly accessibility review
- Reference-style product photo maker
- Sales copy editor
- Website usability review
- Sales copy readiness checker
- Selling points writer
- Small usability test planner
- Store hero section writer
Pairs well with
Built from
- Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant), Wikipedia
- 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group (1994, updated 2024)
- Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users (2000), Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group
- Usability 101: Introduction to Usability (2012), Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group
- Discount Usability: 20 Years (2009), Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group
- Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience (video, 2017), Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group
- Accessibility Has Failed: Try Generative UI (2024), with reader comments, Jakob Nielsen, Jakob Nielsen on UX (Substack)