Somebody pointed out this article by our friend Jakob Nielsen to me: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html
Let's start with this little comment at the beginning: "For this year's list of worst design mistakes, I decided to try something new: I asked readers of my newsletter to nominate the usability problems they found the most irritating." How useless is that?! People who subscribe to Jakob Nielsen's newsletter are *not* normal. They are people who show interest in Usability, people who have got an above average understanding of Website Structure and Web Standards. Just take the first two "biggest mistakes": 1. Legebility (fixed font sizes, non-standard fonts) 2. Non - Standard Links (javascript, opening windows, ...) Sounds familiar? Of course - it's the kind of stuff Web Standards and Usability people love chit-chatting about all day long (including us here on the WSG list). But does it mean they are really the two biggest Usability problems around? I don't think so. Go onto the street and ask anybody who's not absolutely fanatic with Usability or Web Standards what they find is the biggest Usability problem. Will they answer "Oooh, I am really annoyed that I cannot change the font-sizes in my Internet Explorer browser because the evil programmer has set it to a fixed font-size"? No, of course they won't say that. Because it's not the biggest Usability issue in the world, even though Usability and Web Standards discussions might make you think that. If I went and asked my mom "what is the biggest usability issue" would she respond "Oh, Andreas, I hate those javascript popup windows when I click links. They are sooo non-standard and really confusing." CRAP! Of course she won't, because it doesn't bother her as much. I am not saying these problems don't exist - of course they do. But I can guarantee you the public (our real users) would vote completely different on what bugs them about website usability than what subscribers to Jakob Nielsen newsletter do. Just shows how much value you can put into the content on useit.com. Well, just my two cents. Andreas. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
