Jakob Nielsen is always held up as the stalwart of usability, and singly stands out more than anyone else I can think of in any other field. Yet in my opinion, his own site (useit.com), has some areas that are in need of improvement.
By far the most frustrating feature of his website is the lack of columns. On many of the article pages (here being an example), his text runs across the entire width of the window. While this may have been acceptable in the days when a resolution beyond 800x600 was almost unheard of, nowadays it makes for tiresome reading. And data suggests that over 75% of people have moved beyond 800x600s.My laptop monitor is 1280 pixels wide, probably about average. Using the default Firefox font size and a full screen window, the first full line of text in the above article contains 142 characters. Most books contain around 60 characters per line, which allows the reader to pick up the next line without dropping a beat. I've always been aware that on my site, the left-hand column is quite wide, and I think I'm pushing the limit at around 110 characters per line using default settings. However, the jump from 110 to 142 makes a huge difference to readability.
Also, the hierarchy of titles at the top of the homepage is a little confusing. The site's information architecture is not immediately obvious from scanning the homepage, with no navigational element standing out to guide me.
And when I resort to searching, the results page is on a different domain and feels like a completely different place. And this is from the man whose top ten mistakes in web design included the phrase: consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles. The screen has been designed specifically for a narrower screen, and although it clearly indicates that the results are from useit.com, the first one I happened upon took me to a completely different site: nngroup.com.
Sort it out, Jakob!
