Nielsen Norman GroupEvidence-Based User Experience Research, Training, and Consulting
Repetitive actions on websites often work well, but when users try something new, they frequently fail.
Users generally prefer designs that are fast and easy to use, but satisfaction isn't 100% correlated with objective usability metrics.
Users don't see stuff that's right on the screen. Selective attention makes people overlook things outside their focus of interest.
Users increasingly rely on individual pages listed by search engines instead of finding better ways to tackle problems.
Students are multitaskers who move through websites rapidly, often missing the item they come to find. They're enraptured by social media but reserve it for private conversations and thus visit company sites from search engines.
New research with users aged 3-12 shows that older kids have gained substantial Web proficiency since our last studies, while younger kids still face many problems. Designing for children requires distinct usability approaches, including targeting content narrowly for different ages of kids.
Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.
Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.
The granularity of user decisions is much finer on the Web, which is dominated by the instant gratification of the user's needs in any given instant. Content must cater to this rapid pace.
Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.
Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year - mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties.
Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures.
Schools should teach deep, strategic computer insights that can't be learned from reading a manual.
The economic divide is a non-issue, but the usability and empowerment divides alienate huge population groups who miss out on the Internet's potential.
When doing website tasks, the slowest 25% of users take 2.4 times as long as the fastest 25% of users. This difference is much higher than for other types of computer use; only programming shows a greater disparity.
6% of task attempts are extremely slow and constitute outliers in measured user performance. These sad incidents are caused by bad luck that designers can - and should - eradicate.
When working on business problems, users flitter among sites, alternating visits to different service genres. No single website defines the user experience on its own.
Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing.
About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today.
The easier it is to find places with good information, the less time users will spend visiting any individual website. This is one of many conclusions that follow from analyzing how people optimize their behavior in online information systems.
According to a recent critical incident analysis, users' most important Web tasks involve collecting and comparing multiple pieces of information, usually so they can make a choice.
Opponents of the usability movement claim that it focuses on stupid users and that most users can easily overcome complexity. In reality, even smart users prefer pursuing their own goals to navigating idiosyncratic designs. As Web use grows, the price of ignoring usability will only increase.
To take the Internet to the next level, users must begin posting their own material rather than simply consuming content or distributing copyrighted material. Unfortunately most people are poor writers and even worse at authoring other media. Solutions include structured creation, selection-based media, and teaching content creation in schools.
Studies of the social impact of the Internet must consider the changing lifestyle of the new economy and not relate solely to industrial-age concepts.
Web usability has focused on ease of learning for the new visitor. While learnability remains important, it is time to also consider expert performance.
Much is known about Web user behavior, yet research findings are often ignored in actual projects. Examples: up-front customer registration doesn't work; frequency of use and effectiveness of Web marketing methods are negatively correlated.
A survey of 1,780 people who have bought something on the Web found that convenience and ease of use are the main reasons to shop on the Web. Non-buying visits (product research) are important to shoppers.
90% of all websites have poor usability - so why do users still use the Web (and like it, too)?
Users demand compliance with established design conventions. No site can stand out any more; all are part of a single interwoven user experience; the Web as a whole dictates design
The Web is a cognitive medium; the user owns the navigation and won't wait for emotional brand messages. Product sites and classifieds have value, but most ads get puny click-through and few customers.
Examples from tech support calls show the immense difficulties novice users have in using the Internet: be prepared if you field apps intended for broad usage
Because computers are no longer used exclusively for utilitarian tasks, we should use systematic methods to design products that are not just efficient but also attractive to users.
This excerpt from Jakob Nielsen's book Usability Engineering describes how users react to different response time delays.