[jimmar]

Before listening to anything Jakob Nielsen says about usability, go look at his website: http://www.useit.com/. Can you honestly tell me that the man is a usability expert who has a website designed like that?

EDIT: I've read some of his books and agree with what he says most of the time--I definitely don't write off everything he says. I should have worded my post differently.

About useit.com, it's hard to be completely terrible since there is not a functionality. I would argue that the organization of the links is a little odd, lack of dates on news items is not ideal, and the search bar buried at the very top right of a page that scales 100% is a little hard to notice (design & usability intertwined).

[MortenK]

I agree with this, though it is not a popular opinion. There are many issues with the site. You have to read the entire site to find whatever you are looking for. Under news is listed news, then courses, then more news. While visual design is a different discipline as others have pointed out, this design is so bad that it impairs usability simply by being hard to read. It's just a really bad site, and I think it's fair for the op to put a serious questionmark to Jakob Nielsens authority on the subject, based on it.

[chris_wot]

I actually had the same thought..., but actually, I read everything I needed in a very short space of time. Sure, it doesn't look pretty, but I'd have to say its extremely usable. Kinda like Hacker News actually! :-)

[jimmar]

True, the aesthetics are the worst part of the site. I find it odd that there are two main sections: permanent content and news. The news items don't have any dates, which I find annoying. And putting things "reports" in the permanent content section implies that there will never be any new reports. Does the permanent content really never change? Maybe I'm being too nit-picky. :)

[chris_wot]

Actually, the news thing is pretty good point! Didn't notice that. Definitely not very user friendly... Which is a bit of a surprise. I don't agree with everything Neilson says (like this report) but he's actually been pretty good many times. I guess usability is something that's hard to get 100% right all the time.

[andybak]

Can you provide a bit more detail to convince me that you understand the difference between visual design and usability?

[hej]

It's possible to do valuable empirical usability research, develop theories and imterpret data without having an aesthatically pleasing website. Useit.com is not very pretty, nor modern or fashionable – but that's visual design. I don't think it's a bad website from a usability perspective, but even if there are some problems with it, Nielsen has done too much important work to just ignore him.

(I think he is wrong when it comes to this particular issue, I see no reason to generally ignore him, though.)