4 ms·

Yawn. That's a pretty non impressive redesign, especially for a company that deals in user experience. Did they forget that aesthetic factors into experience?

akandiah 14y ago
It's not that impressive. Then again, Nielsen has rarely given importance to aesthetics in UIs.
- scholia 14y ago
  Possibly because aethetics are, relatively, not very important compared to usability, functionality and speed. None of the world's most successful websites pays overmuch attention to aesthetics, including Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Yahoo, MailOnline, The New York Times, the old Hotmail, Slashdot, Reddit and Hacker News.
  - emini_guy 14y ago
    Good point. I prefer good original content over anything else and can live with Wikipedia design all my life.
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    All of those sites have something that sets them apart in a way Nielsen himself has mentioned many times: most of their visitors probably do spend a significant amount of time there on a regular basis, so they don't need to follow the same rules as everyone else. Of course, whether those sites are successful because of their questionable aesthetics or despite them is a different question, and whether they might be more successful by some interesting measure if they tried a major change in their design is another question again. In any case, details that are purely aesthetic -- subjective matters of beauty and personal taste -- don't make a difference to ease of use. That's a tautology, because not mattering to other factors is almost the definition of a detail being merely aesthetic. However, more generally, things like visual design and typography do matter and can make a measurable difference.
jaredmcateer 14y ago
If you saw the site before you would agree that Jakob Nielsen is very much in the camp that aesthetics get in the way usability.
- davidkatz 14y ago
  aesthetics gets in the way of usability? that sounds too wrong for anyone to believe. i mean, i'm the first to call out the current ridiculous 'design for the sake of design' trend. abuse of "pretty" interfaces abound, but clearly there can't be anything wrong with taking the same interaction design with good typography, good use of whitespace, good use of color. done right, aesthetics increases usability.
  - msellout 14y ago
    The argument is more about how to define "good".

akandiah 14y ago

It's not that impressive. Then again, Nielsen has rarely given importance to aesthetics in UIs.

scholia 14y ago
Possibly because aethetics are, relatively, not very important compared to usability, functionality and speed. None of the world's most successful websites pays overmuch attention to aesthetics, including Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Yahoo, MailOnline, The New York Times, the old Hotmail, Slashdot, Reddit and Hacker News.
- emini_guy 14y ago
  Good point. I prefer good original content over anything else and can live with Wikipedia design all my life.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  All of those sites have something that sets them apart in a way Nielsen himself has mentioned many times: most of their visitors probably do spend a significant amount of time there on a regular basis, so they don't need to follow the same rules as everyone else. Of course, whether those sites are successful because of their questionable aesthetics or despite them is a different question, and whether they might be more successful by some interesting measure if they tried a major change in their design is another question again. In any case, details that are purely aesthetic -- subjective matters of beauty and personal taste -- don't make a difference to ease of use. That's a tautology, because not mattering to other factors is almost the definition of a detail being merely aesthetic. However, more generally, things like visual design and typography do matter and can make a measurable difference.

jaredmcateer 14y ago

If you saw the site before you would agree that Jakob Nielsen is very much in the camp that aesthetics get in the way usability.

davidkatz 14y ago
aesthetics gets in the way of usability? that sounds too wrong for anyone to believe. i mean, i'm the first to call out the current ridiculous 'design for the sake of design' trend. abuse of "pretty" interfaces abound, but clearly there can't be anything wrong with taking the same interaction design with good typography, good use of whitespace, good use of color. done right, aesthetics increases usability.
- msellout 14y ago
  The argument is more about how to define "good".