Papers and Essays by Jakob Nielsen
Highlighted text is used to indicate the most popular papers according to the useit.com log files.See also Jakob Nielsen's complete publication list.
Alertbox
Bi-weekly Alertbox column about Web usability.Papers
I apologize for the fact that these papers were written for print publication. Thus, they are often quite long and not well suited for online reading.
- Beyond the Browser, Inter@ctive Week article by Bruce Tognazzini and Jakob Nielsen (2001)
- Make your site usable, PC Magazine article by Jakob Nielsen, Kara Pernice Coyne, and Marie Tahir (2001)
- Building Web Sites With Depth, WebTechniques article by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir (2001)
- Usability On The Web Isn't A Luxury, InformationWeek article by Jakob Nielsen and Donald A. Norman (2000)
- How to write for the Web (based on how people read on the Web) (1997)
- Parallel design: testing multiple alternative designs in the beginning of a project (1996)
- The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)
- The future of hypertext (1995)
- The history of hypertext (1995)
- Navigating Large Information Spaces (1995)
- Information overload (1995)
- Architecture of hypertext systems (1995)
- Report from a 1994 study of Web usability, including historically important screenshots of early sites from HP, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, and Time-Warner. Interestingly, most of the usability findings from this early study are still being confirmed in most of the more recent studies we do. (1994)
- SunWeb: User interface design for Sun Microsystem's intranet (1994)
- Goal Composition: Extending Task Analysis to Predict Things People May Want to Do (1994)
- Survey of Usability Laboratories (1994)
- Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation Barrier (1994) (66 K file)
- Iterative Design (1995)
- Non-Command User Interfaces (1993) (Very long: 119K file)
- Information Retrieval of Imperfectly Recognized Handwriting (1993)
- A Layered Interaction Analysis of Direct Manipulation (1992)
- Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard (1991)
- Analysis of the usability and navigation of three large HyperCard stacks on CD-ROM (The Manhole, Whole Earth Catalog, Time Table of History) (1989)
- Conference trip reports from various user interface and hypertext conferences (1986-1994)
Heuristic Evaluation
- Information about heuristic
evaluation
Includes: list of ten usability heuristics and a summary of usability inspection methods
Essays
Even though most of these essays were also written for print, they are short and reasonably easy to read online.
- Palm Foleo: A Failed Mobile Device (May 2007)
- Google Is Making You Dumber (BusinessWeek, May 29, 2007)
- Collecting Feedback About Your Website's Search Interface (WebReference newsletter, 2000)
- Ten Biggest Thinkers of the 20th Century (1999)
- Structural navigation in iCab (1999)
- Two talks I might be presenting at Internet World 2008 - a simple, but fun, exercise in futurism (1998)
- Design rationale for Sun Microsystems' 1997 Web site design (1998)
- The JavaRing: a Wearable Computer (1998)
- Discount usability engineering is the only hope for coping with the Web's hypergrowth (1997)
- The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups (1997)
- The usability of the telephone: Voice is just another datatype (1997)
- International usability testing (1996)
- Seductive User Interfaces (1996)
- The Death of File Systems (1996)
- How to rate the severity of usability problems (1995)
- History of hypertext (1995) and a report from the first hypertext conference, Hypertext'87
- Iterative design of Sun's website in 1995 (May 1995)
- Response Times: The three important limits (1994)
Recommendations
- Brief comments about sites spotlighted on the useit homepage
- Recommended other websites
- Recommended books by other authors
Website Makeovers
Intermittent contributor to feature in Business Week- ideas.com, C2B site that employed early usability testing, November 2000
- amIhealthy.com, health survey site, September 2000
- Axcis.com, sports site, January 2000