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Jakob Nielsen the guru of web page usability (New
York Times) was recently in the UK presenting as key note speaker
Internet Magazine's "Building Successful Web Sites" conference at
the QE2 conference centre in London. Catriona Campbell CEO of The
Usability Company also spoke at the conference where subjects raised
and discussed were aimed at introducing SMEs to the importance of
usable sites in the pursuit of profit. Jakob Nielsen continued his
crusade against "evil" by berating the still common errors of designers
and content suppliers on the internet. Nielsen described the worldwide
web as "Evil, lazy and Stupid" he cited the pop up ads that mimic
error boxes as evil.
Laziness was to be found closer to Nielsen's home,
his own page in fact, he berated the chronological arrangement of
articles stating that users seldom searched for his articles by
date, but by subject matter. Stupidity on the Web was possibly the
most commercially hazardous area, businesses consistently neglected
to tell users when their trial period on a piece of software would
expire and more annoying to Jakob Nielsen, service agencies who
gave little indication of price. The conclusions of Usability's
Godfather was that Web evolution would soon sort these problems
out as their stupidity, laziness and evil would be their own undoing,
in his own form of electronic Darwinism, it seems that Nielsen believes,
only the usable will survive.
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