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Review of the NN-group World Tour

Posted on December 06, 2000

in Reviews & Links

by peter van dijck (pedrito)

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peter van dijck

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User since: October 22, 1999

Last login: August 30, 2005

Articles written: 23

The gods of usability, the Nielsen Norman Group, are currently on a world tour. Is it worth attending? Well, it's expensive, so that'll depend on who's paying...

Conclusions

  • If you have to pay yourself it's probably not worth the expense. You may be better off finding alternative sources of information on the Web.
  • If your company is paying, then go for it.
  • If you have to choose between a course or the main event go to a course.
  • Jakob Nielsen has got some impressive body language going...

Main day

Very entertaining; Jakob Nielsen was surprisingly interesting. Tog was less interesting for me, Brenda’s bit was alright (think Captain Janeway) and Donald Norman’s presentation was disappointing since he wasn’t there and we got to see a video.

Review of the courses

  • Advanced Usability Testing Methodology
    Everyone thought it wasn’t detailed enough, but it definitely made me a better usability professional. Worth it. I concluded that all Web sites of any complexity have thousands of little usability problems. Focus on the main ones. Lots of good tips to do testing. Also, train your designers / programmers in usability! That will improve the product a lot more than testing.

  • Introduction to Web Usability Testing
    Only for beginners.

  • E-Commerce Usability
    Better to go to the advanced usability course.

  • E-Marketing for Non-Marketers
    Very good if you’re into this stuff.

  • The Art & Science of Web Design
    Good overview, touching on IA issues and lots of related stuff. If you’re into this stuff you already know all this. Also sections on stylesheets and different browsers and such which may be less relevant to you. Very good for a general overview of the state of the art things to know if you’re in webdesign.

  • Content Design & Usability-Writing for the Web
    Didn't catch this one. If anyone else did, please add a comment to this article.

  • Designing Usable Web Forms
    Didn't catch this one either.

Discussion

In addition to commenting on this page, you can also participate in a discussion on my site.

Peter Van Dijck is an Information Architect with an interest in localization, accessibility, content management systems and metadata.
  • poorbuthappy.com/ease Weblog
  • petervandijck.net Portfolio
  • Easytopicmaps.com
  • liga1.com Accessibility and localization
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    Submitted by mantruc on December 7, 2000 - 08:44.

    World Tour? not quite New York Chicago Austin San Francisco Seattle London Munich Stockholm Tokyo Hong Kong Sydney still too far for me :-(

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    Submitted by wolf on December 8, 2000 - 07:19.

    well, Javier, from looking at their (NNG) report about what was great in Muniche, I think it is not a big loss to be not there. Just one example (among others), why I think it is lots of money for things informed evolters know, or can very easily get the information to it. "We advise clients: If you want to be seen by the search engines, then you shouldn't put your site in a database." Gee. I think most evolters knew this for some time. Though I would hesitate to absolutely call databases search engine unfriendly. As with many things in life, it depends. Part of the workshops I conduct is how to make a search engine friendly design with dynamic architecture, including databases, depending on what it is running and how, one can do a lot in the planning phase. So this statement does not sound like they are really informed- looking at other usability topics, I have the feeling they are talking about things I (and not only me I am sure) have done, before I even knew the term (some time ago). But maybe my morning coffee was just bad. In my opinion Nielsen is a, ehm, interesting character, both in good and bad things. So I hope I stepped on nobody's toes, if, sorry, was not intented. Thanks Peter for reporting!

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