My problem with Nielsen, despite his huge and valuable impact, is his approach of more or less declaring the Commandments of web UI. UI is always a custom solu

My problem with Nielsen, despite his huge and valuable impact, is his approach of more or less declaring the Commandments of web UI. UI is always a custom solution to a specific problem, a way of responding to user intent through web functionality. There may be expectations that people become accustomed to (such as the way links appear), but the technology underlying the web is constantly changing (see: HTML 5, touch interfaces, etc.) and so expectations need to evolve as well. Focusing so much on the UI elements rather than overall goal always seemed like a lost opportunity to educate people, and ultimately feels like "oh, this is much too hard to understand, just follow these rules and you'll be OK." It's an easy solution for people to get behind, but not very effective for improving UI on the web.