I Thought it Was Obvious
posted on november 20, 2003, tag: web
In the recent contest to redesign web "usability guru" Jakob Nielsen's site, Useit.com, I was astounded by how many people used pictures of him in their designs.
I don't know if I'm the only person who thinks this, but Nielsen looks frightening. It's bad enough that he has tons of ultra-high resolution photos on his website (so high you can see his pores), but now people think his face should greet you every time you visit the site? It's not a real problem for me, since I never visit the site and can't stand Nielsen at all anyway, but for people who do—should they have to see this? Dear god please no.
I was shocked when I saw design entries like this one, in which Nielsen's ugly mug and giant head are incorporated into the design. From a usability standpoint: is a website more usable if the people visiting it vomit instantly when they see the author's photograph? Is the site more usable when they continue to vomit in each section and eventually try to gouge their eyes out just to make it all stop?
How about this entry in which Nielsen is slowly coming out of the shadows, without doubt, to kill me. Or this entry in which size 60pt font fits comfortably on Nielsen's gigantic, pale forehead/bald spot. And my favourite use of a photograph is in this entry (which I really like otherwise), in which we see up Nielsen's nose and get a nice angle of his mutton chop. Fantastic! (Vomiting!)
Aisde from the photo aspect, however, there were some really great entries. I'm sure Jakob won't use them, because that's the kind of person he is, but it was interesting to see how people thought a website all about usability should look. Two of my favourite entries are George Sekera's and Stephane Curzi's.
Comments
There are 8 comments, comments are closed
Shawn on 11/20/2003:
You are so dead on about Jakob Nielsen it is frightening. No, in fact, what's frightening is that, outside of you, I have heard nothing but praise for this narcissistic Penguin look-alike. The pictures are absurd! And no one realizes it!
Tarsh on 11/20/2003:
Heh, have to be cruel to be kind.
Jonathan on 11/20/2003:
I couldn't agree more. My co-worker is always going on about Jakob Nielson's book, his website, Jakob Neilson this, Jakob Neilson that, Jakob Neilson says to do this, not to do that. I'M SO SICK OF IT! Is this guy the lord of the web or what? Sure he has some good ideas but I just wish people would stop kissing his feet.
** Rant over **
sox on 11/20/2003:
My mama told me never to trust a Jakob with a "k" and so far I haven't seen any evidence to prove her otherwise. Of course my blinding hatred for certain names extend much further than jakob... people with two r's and two t's in their names for instance. ;-)
Chris McEvoy on 11/21/2003:
This picture is even better.
Stephane Curzi on 11/22/2003:
Personally, I don't think he is that Frightening, just unpleasant to look at ;-) I do think that this entry is a really good use of his photo (apart for the nostril...).
Seeing that a couple of people like my Iconic design, I wish I had push it a little bit more, I knew I like it but I found there was something missing but couldn't figure out what. Anyway, thanks.
Anthony on 11/26/2003:
LOL! You have me laughing myself off of my chair with this one! That guy certainly does not need to be in the site designs... and if he ends up being in them, that certainly wouldn't help usability, as you said. The only thing that stopped my laughing dead in it's tracks is thinking of that shadowy Jakob quietly stalking me as I try to make something using Flash. Yikes!
_Lewellyn on 12/02/2003:
I dunno what it is about all of those designs that decided that "the browser's default color is fine" and then go and use images with white grounds. (Even Stephane Curzi's entry suffered from that. And the orange made for a gross color combination here...)
In my case, my browser background is a grayish-purplish color that matches the rest of my Windows theme. Or is it just IE's fault and they all really do have white grounds in the CSS?