“The oldies continue to be goodies – or rather, baddies – in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Search engine users click the results listings’ top entry much more often than can be explained by relevancy ratings. Once again, people tend to stick to the defaults.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it’s often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Up to 40% of precious testing time is wasted while users engage in nonessential activities. Far better to focus on watching users perform tasks with the target interface design.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than four weeks after users click on search engine ads.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they’re interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn’t be given a browser UI.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Measuring the live impact of design changes on key business metrics is valuable, but often creates a focus on short-term improvements. This near-term view neglects bigger issues that only qualitative studies can find.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Usability testing has long been a part of the software and product design world. Jakob Nielsen brought the concept of usability to the Web, making Web pages simple to navigate and intuitively organized so that users can easily find the information they’re looking for. While this definition may be considered sufficient in the world of software, the definition of usability in the e-learning world should encompass a few more components than simply good user interface design.” (Shailesh Shilwant and Amy Haggarty – CLO) – courtesy of usernomics

“Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world’s largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon’s design.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Our analysis sheds light on a variety of heretofore neglected, user-experience related design challenges associated with blogs’ potential to become a mainstream medium for Internet users.” (John Franklin – Catalyst Group Design)

“Despite posing well-known risks, websites continue to feature poorly designed scrollbars. Among the ongoing problems that result are frustrated users, accessibility challenges, and missed content.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Usability’s job is to research user behavior and find out what works. Usability should also defend users’ rights and fight for simplicity. Both aspects have their place, and it’s important to recognize the difference.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“I would like to propose the addition of ‘Jakob Nielsen’ to that list. By continuing to talk to web designers as if they are ignorant, lazy philistines only serves to undermine the role of usability specialists within organisations.” (Chris McEvoy – Confusability) – courtesy of usabilityviews

“Most usability practitioners don’t derive full value from their user tests because they don’t systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“300,000 words of usability essays have had an impact: online user interfaces are considerably easier to use now than they were in 1995. Many predictions and recommendations have come true, though the full Alertbox vision is far from realized.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“In recent years, intranet homepages have become very similar in their basic layout. Intranets that look the same can nonetheless differ drastically in usability due to different features and content.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“The challenges are considerable and daunting.” (Aaron Marcus – ACM Ubiquity)

“If you frequent our web sites, you’ve probably noticed the change: There’s a fresh new look, and we’ve also updated things to make it easier to navigate. Rather than explain everything, which I will do in coming weeks, I thought I would show some before and after pictures.” (Sun Bloggers)

“Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)