Usability - An Interview with Jakob Nielsen

Gerry Gaffney conducts a wide-ranging interview with Jakob Nielsen.

Is web usability where it's at? Does usability have a say on climate change? Why is the keyboard so popular?

Jakob talks about having data propagate to multiple devices, about why government agencies continue to apply an outdated "waterfall' model, and about how usability can make developing countries rich quickly and thus improve the environment.

He talks about the need to make things easier if you want people to do those things, about future directions in user interaction, and about the need to start small if you're budget-constrained.

Jakob Nielsen's website is useit.com (www.useit.com)

His company is the Nielsen Norman Group (www.nngroup.com).

Jakob refers to Microsoft's Ray Ozzie (www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ozzie/default.mspx) and Groove (www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/10/24/ozzie_interview.html).

He also refers to the anti-mac interface (www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html).

Jakob's forthcoming event is usability week (www.nngroup.com/events/).

Jakob's excellent books include "Usability Engineering" (tinyurl.com/4lsfdv) and "Designing Web Usability" (tinyurl.com/5ymz5t).