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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 sp

by 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 bprater 18y ago

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.