4 ms·

I have always liked his stuff, and I read and liked Designing Web Usability, but the enterprise-ish pricing on the real meat of his research annoys me immensely

by ojbyrne 18y ago

I have always liked his stuff, and I read and liked Designing Web Usability, but the enterprise-ish pricing on the real meat of his research annoys me immensely. E.g. "Usability of Intranet Portals A Report from the Trenches: Experiences From Real-Life Portal Projects 3rd Edition 343 pages PDF format $348 for a single report, $698 for the report and a site license to make copies within your organization and place on your intranet. (No shipping/handling fees will be added: it's a download.)" The parenthetical statement is hilarious. Site Licenses for books are hilarious.

bprater 18y ago
I know folks in the business of selling educational material to corporate customers and it's a huge business. If you have a corporate credit card and have to spend so much for education each year that kind of money is a no brainer.
- curiousgeorge 18y ago
  if you trust the relevance of his research its far, far cheaper to just purchase the report than hire someone to do the same research yourself. I'd suspect most developers with niche products have niche usability needs that make it lesson relevant. If you're building a giant web portal, it seems relatively inexpensive for access to decent comparative stats.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    its far, far cheaper to just purchase the report than hire someone to do the same research yourself Amen to that. You think $350 is expensive? That's like three hours of consultant time. For someone with Nielsen's resume, more like 1-2 hours. But, hey -- if you think it'll improve the situation, I might be willing to support your effort to give Nielsen a government grant that pays for his salary and his lab and lets him release all of his research for free.
    - ojbyrne 18y ago
      And PCs used to cost $3000. Now they cost $500 (other than Macs). Operating systems used to require consultants and were priced for enterprises, until Windows came along and completely changed the market. There's lot of instances where a dramatic cut in price opened a new market for products, and it sure seems like this is the case here. I also find the whole "site licensing" of PDFs (which obviously means DRM) kind of obnoxious. Finally I find that the useit.com approach of putting up short parts of reports, followed by a link to the paid report, to be borderline sleazy. Perhaps I'm influenced by the "free" culture that is so pervasive these days.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  If so, I'd guess that the business of selling educational material to corporate customers is probably ripe for something disruptive.

by ojbyrne 18y ago

bprater 18y ago

I know folks in the business of selling educational material to corporate customers and it's a huge business. If you have a corporate credit card and have to spend so much for education each year that kind of money is a no brainer.

curiousgeorge 18y ago
if you trust the relevance of his research its far, far cheaper to just purchase the report than hire someone to do the same research yourself. I'd suspect most developers with niche products have niche usability needs that make it lesson relevant. If you're building a giant web portal, it seems relatively inexpensive for access to decent comparative stats.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  its far, far cheaper to just purchase the report than hire someone to do the same research yourself Amen to that. You think $350 is expensive? That's like three hours of consultant time. For someone with Nielsen's resume, more like 1-2 hours. But, hey -- if you think it'll improve the situation, I might be willing to support your effort to give Nielsen a government grant that pays for his salary and his lab and lets him release all of his research for free.
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    And PCs used to cost $3000. Now they cost $500 (other than Macs). Operating systems used to require consultants and were priced for enterprises, until Windows came along and completely changed the market. There's lot of instances where a dramatic cut in price opened a new market for products, and it sure seems like this is the case here. I also find the whole "site licensing" of PDFs (which obviously means DRM) kind of obnoxious. Finally I find that the useit.com approach of putting up short parts of reports, followed by a link to the paid report, to be borderline sleazy. Perhaps I'm influenced by the "free" culture that is so pervasive these days.
ojbyrne 18y ago
If so, I'd guess that the business of selling educational material to corporate customers is probably ripe for something disruptive.