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Jakob Nielson - usability guru

Fri Feb 1, 2008 Jakob Nielson is a web usability consultant who believes that page loading times should determine how a website is designed. To improve the user experience, for example, he advocates against using large graphics or fancy flash animations (among other things) because most users don’t have broadband. His work is important because it focuses on the most efficient way for users to navigate the web and websites. Partly as a result of his teachings, website designers have moved away from bloated graphic-heavy websites to cleaner, more intuitive interfaces.

Nielson left his job as an engineer at Sun Microsystems to become a consultant. He helps businesses maximize their ROI on web redesigns for usability. He has a large following in web design circles but has come under some criticism for rejecting aesthetics at the expense of perfecting the user interface.

A look at his website will tell you a lot about his design aesthetic.

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