Jackob Nielsen on Web design and readability

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Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox free newsletter for December 7 is now online at:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/short-term-memory.html

Nielsen is one of the top Web usability designer/gurus around. [See Wiki]

Summary:

The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data
memorization that that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines
are dictated by cognitive limitations.

TEXT from JAKOB NIELSEN: People can't keep much information in their short-term memory. This is especially true when they're bombarded with multiple abstract or unusual pieces of data in rapid succession. Lest designers forget how easily users forget, let's review why our brains seem to be so weak.

Human beings are remarkably good at hunting the woolly mammoth. Considering that we humans have neither fangs nor claws, our ancestors did fine work in exterminating most megafauna from Australia to North America armed with nothing better than flint weapons. (In today's more environmentally conscious world, we might deplore their slaughtering ways, but early humans were more interested in catching their dinner.)

Many of the skills needed to use computers aren't highly useful in slaying mammoths. Such skills include remembering obscure codes from one screen to the next and interpreting highly abbreviated form-field labels. It's no surprise that people are no good at these skills, since they weren't important for survival in the ancestral environment.

The human brain today is the same as the human brain 10,000 years ago. Indeed, I thought of using the title "Designing Websites for Cavemen" for our new course on how psychology explains usability guidelines and dictates effective website design. However, doing so would violate the guideline against using cute headlines that don't actually explain what a page (or, in this case, a seminar) is about.

Instead, we picked the title, "Usability and the Human Mind: How Your Customers Think."

If I'd gone with the first title, it would have primed your long-term memory to activate terms related to "cavemen" — probably including concepts such as man-eating dinosaurs lodged there by watching too many B-movies. It definitely wouldn't activate concepts related to improving your site's business performance. In contrast, the title we ultimately chose includes the word "customers," which primes the memory in a more appropriate way, attracts more clicks, and puts users in a business-oriented mindset.