Jakob Nielsen

Biography

Jakob Nielsen has been called:
* "the king of usability" (Internet Magazine)
* "the guru of Web page usability" (The New York Times)
* "the next best thing to a true time machine" (USA Today)
* "the smartest person on the Web" (ZDNet AnchorDesk)
* "the world`s leading expert on Web usability" (U.S. News & World Report)
* one of the top 10 minds in small business (FORTUNE Small Business)
* "the world`s leading expert on user-friendly design" (Stuttgarter Zeitung, Germany)
* "knows more about what makes Web sites work than anyone else on the planet" (Chicago Tribune)
* "one of the world`s foremost experts in Web usability" (Business Week)
* "the Web`s usability czar" (WebReference.com)
* "the reigning guru of Web usability" (FORTUNE)
* "eminent Web usability guru" (CNN)
* "perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet" (Financial Times)
* "the usability Pope" (Wirtschaftswoche Magazine, Germany)
* "new-media pioneer" (Newsweek)
* One of the "world`s most influential designers" (Businessweek)

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Before starting NNG in 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer.

Dr. Nielsen founded the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.

Jakob Nielsen holds a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen.

In June 2000, Dr. Nielsen was inducted into the Scandinavian Interactive Media Hall of Fame. In April 2006, he was inducted into the ACM Computer-Human Interaction Academy.

Publications

Eyetracking Web Usability

Eyetracking Web Usability is based on one of the largest studies of eyetracking usability in existence. Best-selling author Jakob Nielsen and coauthor Kara Pernice used rigorous usability methodology and eyetracking technology to analyze 1.5 million instances where users look at Web sites to understand how the human eyes interact with design. Their findings will help designers, software developers, writers, editors, product managers, and advertisers understand what people see or don`t see, when they look, and why.

With their comprehensive three-year study, the authors confirmed many known Web design conventions and the book provides additional insights on those standards. They also discovered important new user behaviors that are revealed here for the first time. Using compelling eye gaze plots and heat maps, Nielsen and Pernice guide the reader through hundreds of examples of eye movements, demonstrating why some designs work and others don`t. They also provide valuable advice for page layout, navigation menus, site elements, image selection, and advertising. This book is essential reading for anyone who is serious about doing business on the Web.