Hank Williams: UI Guru Jakob Nielsen’s Site Is Unreadable

The conventional wisdom on Jakob Nielsen and useit.com has always been something along the lines of, Sure, his site is ugly, but his advice is great. I’ll just come out and say it: I think Jakob Nielsen’s advice tends to be trite. And his writing style never comes across as actual prose; rather than feeling like reading an essay, reading Jakob Nielsen always feels like reading a summary of an essay.

And then there are the people who declare that useit.com is in fact brilliantly designed, and that those who criticize it as ugly or cluttered or childish just don’t see how brilliant it really is.

★ Tuesday, 12 August 2008