Macromedia Hires Jakob Nielsen

Augh. I've been waiting for some of that since '96! I must buy more red shirts and lose my hair.

t,

wow, jakob is all up in that house now. does that mean he's going to limit the features in flash to make it so that you can't make cool interfaces or he's going to help build templates that people can use to build ugly, generic sites like dreamweaver does?

-mat

"..."if you want to be awarded a fat contract with a major software company, bitch to high heaven...."

Hey, if that worked, half the people online would be millionaires already.... ;-)

(Seriously, if you've got better advice for other people, with a better chance of getting them to listen, then that would be cool too... doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.)

jd

And looky, looky ... he's changed his toon a bit now too by saying "Flash [is] Now Improved". VIsit the previously linked essay.

ooh no.

Ugh, talk about a lame PR exercise. MM is really trying to patch up their image. This news is going to rile up designers no end ;)

I know the whole designers vs jakob thing is way old (*thinks back to dreamless*) but with journalism like this he is going to tread on a lot of toes:
- Jakob Nielsen, a leading Web design guru...
- Nielsen said the "usability" message has also gotten out to business executives, who increasingly acknowledge that bad design means ... lost business.
- [Nielsen] added: "That's the danger. You give designers more-powerful tools, and who knows what they're going to do with them." (!)

Persumably he's talking about usability design in the first two, but they really should stop blurring the lines.

Anyway, flash is pants.

We should probably be reading this:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y27012DF

:D

Its not the program itself that needs to be taught but the users that operate the program :D

“I think there’s a common misperception, especially among the younger cohort online, that design is an endeavor that concerns the decoration of a surface in an attempt to achieve aesthetic distinction or beauty.” —“The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes,” ALA

It amuses me that Luke objects (in j’accuse! fashion) to the use of the word “design” by journalists. No, I take that back: it irritates me. Why must everyone assume that the word graphic is always implied? What about those who design not (solely) for aesthetic purposes, but to solve problems? …achieve objectives? …fulfill plans? Do these people not “design”? Of course they do.

Let me return to the article: “the practice of design necessarily involves solving problems.” Never forget that what Jakob is trying to do is precisely that. While we can argue as to his success, his goal is not to make your life miserable, or restrict creativity, or really, anything of the sort. His goal is to make the Internet as easy to use as possible.

For the record, if every site had the same color scheme, the same link colors, the same semantic organization, etc., etc., the Web would be much easier to use. As rich and varied? Of course not. But when it comes time to strike the balance between ease-of-use and originality, between novelty and familiarity, remember Jakob tests what he says. You can do the same. Then, rather than making these ridiculous broad ideological statements, you can make decisions based upon real trade-offs: Is this color scheme too difficult for the elderly or the differently-abled? Do users recognize this widget or has it become too abstract?

Finally, shame on you, Todd. Jakob has more than 65 U.S. patents. A Ph.D in user interface design. He was one of a handful of Distinguished Engineers at Sun. He worked for the IBM User Interface Institute. What else, precisely, is needed to qualify one as an expert? Did you ever consider he was acting in good faith? That he truly wants to better the Web? And while we’re at it, what about Macromedia? Did Jakob exact this contract as some sort of ransom? No. Did they freely decide that they wanted to hear what he had to say so that they could better their product? I would sure think so. “Hush money,” my ass. I hold Macromedia in much higher esteem than that.You should as well.

Oh my!

Do I detect a touch of haughtiness in the air? Why, I think I do!

Your right jsp, I am young, and I am online... Fear my youthful enthusiasm for the inane! Behold, my naive ignorance in matters of truth and beauty in the art of problem solving, [b]true[/b] design!

How could I possibly be so stupid to think the web was a visual medium, where people browse pages of text, interact with graphic doohickeys, and communicate to and fro by... *gasp* looking at a screen!

My life designing for [i]soley[/i] aesthetic purposes (hah!) has surely been in vain! If only I could have been a programmer, designing applications, a carpenter, designing furniture, or a council worker, designing the holes I spend my days digging into the ground...

No, these paths would have also been in vain. The true calling of one who cares deeply for the meticulous art of [i]true[/i] design is to produce sites of such unequivical usability, sites of such navigable brilliance, sites of such sheer user ecstasy that they could only have one true visual form, and that form would surely be this!

---

Perhaps you could try broadening your horizens a little jsp, by reading the usability book I linked to in my original post.

Or you could stick to hopelessly simple answers to rather complex problems, and let the unquestionably certified 'experts' do the thinking for you.

Up to you :)

Oops... slipped into ubb mode their for a minute. Todd, if you could be so kind... :)

Normally I agree with you, Todd, but in this case I'd applaud Nielsen and Macromedia both. It's not as if Nielson just took the money and re-wrote the review -- he actually worked at Macromedia to help fix some of Flash's usability problems, and left the old review online to prove that he wasn't changing his tune about the old release.

Are "we" taking in consideration the date of these articles? Information does decay and rather rapidly in the technology arena. "Flash: 99% Bad" is two years old and in that article he refers to another article written in 1995. Don't get me wrong, there are concepts that will stand the test of time, but with each year of advancement in technology, we have a perspective that is forever changing.

yep, this has mr.moneybags written all over it... I attended a lecture of Jakob's where he basically told those of us in the audience using Flash that we would be out of job in the next decade.

*yawn*

This is just another example of the bell curve of life. There will always be a need for the extremes to be able to reach a happy middle majority. Human nature will never do what they are supposed to do unless prodded by one extreme or the other. When prodded, they do something in the middle which is good enough. Nielsen is the useability extreme to counter the artistic extreme sites where noone knows what the heck is going on. The middle ground is a group of sites that the majority of the people can use and enjoy because the designers found a balance between total useability and fine art.

First, my compliments to Lauri for her sage comments (and a quite nice personal site.)
I agree wholeheartedly that it is necessary to find middle ground, and that is exactly why the Nielsen/Macromedia partnership is worthy of cheers, not (Dominey) jeers. Macromedia will work hard to provide a tool with the flexibility customers demand, while Jakob will try to express the needs of users.

I am reminded of Richard Hendel&8217;s On Book Design, a lovely book that (in part) considers the role of a designer: do the best books have an “invisible” design—serving only to better express the text—or does the designer have the role of adding meaning?

Such, to me, is the nature of graphic design on the Web. In each project it must be determined what is most valued. Keep in mind that those who pay for Jakob’s studies are usually e-commerce sites, where, for example, the use of the words “add to cart” as opposed to anything else really does (see ¶ 6) result in faster apprehension and greater sales.

Jakob has something to bring to the table. It is not your obligation to follow it, but you are unwise indeed if you do not even listen.

Macromedia's partnership with Jakob is a good thing in the short run for the Flash community. The first effect of the partnership will be to offset the Flash: 99% Bad argument that stops many Flash projects from even getting off the ground. The long term effects will remain to be seen, but I can almost hear Jakob Nielsen harping of Flash sites in 2003 by saying something along the lines of "90% of the Flash sites I visited have only instituted 10% of my usability guidelines."

I've got a bit more on the subject written in an open letter to Jakob Nielsen:

http://www.flazoom.com/cooler/1023138717,55362,.shtml

Nice letter CHris.

OT:

What I don't get is why, in this current climate of accessibility for all, degradeability and forward compatibility (ra ra ra), why is Flash MX (or flash at all) even considered for any significant commercial site? As Chris points out in his letter, all the user benifits of Flash MX are moot when the users don't have the plug in. And hardly anyone does.

I can see the benefit of using flash for more 'creative' endevours like designers portfolios (hi Todd :) interactive maps and other "icing on the cake" scenarios, but where are these mysterious Flash MX rich applications? I take it they are not part of the web-at-large, but some kind of secret intranet/b2b (eek!) initative?

It would be nice if 99% of people did have the plugin, and therefore eliminated the need for two sites, but it would also be nice is NS4.x was standards compliant (or just never existed) but sometimes we've just got to face reality and get on with it, right?

To Luke--what are you talking about when you write " And hardly anyone does [have the Flash plug in]." The plug in is installed on about 98% of browsers in use today. Your knowledge of what's going on is on a par with my grandmother's.

From CHris' letter:

As for your comment that "Flash now ships with a standard set of interaction controls" - well sure it does, and the Flash community has been very receptive of the UI Components that Macromedia has made available. The problem there is that not enough users have access to the Flash 6 plug-in (the latest figures show only 3 to 6% of web users have the ability to view the UI Components). I can understand your enthusiasm about the UI components, but as a usability consultant myself; I am hesitant to recommend that clients push Flash 6 plug-in features on their audiences just yet. What about you?