Jakob Nielsen on Weblogs: The Critique

Jakob Nielsen used to be a guru.  There used to be a time when having a Nielsen book on your shelf showed you had cutting-edge experience in the web design world.  Are there any designers working in the corporate world that still feel this way?

He's old hat.  He's useful to start with - but his advice just keeps getting worse and worse.  I was recently e-mailed a link to Mr. Nielsen's views on weblog design - and I wasn't impressed.  It crossed my mind that, considering my lack of design skills, that an attack on Nielsen was a bit like an ant threatening an elephant. 

That only works if Nielsen's work stand up to my critique - so I'm going to write it down - and if my critique runs true, you have to wonder what kind of guru can't write a list that even little ol' me can't take down.

The very idea that Weblog design is akin to website design is the first sign that Nielsen is working in a medium of which he knows nothing.  I may not be a designer - but I sure as heck am a blogger.

The critique is below the fold:

My comments in italics.

Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes:  Jakob Nielsen
Summary:
Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.

Jakob, this is a feature, not a bug.  Weblogs are started, maintained, and ended for every reason under the sun.  Sometimes a person just wants to write - sometimes they want to connect with a broader community, and sometimes they don't have the skills or the time to charter focus groups and lay out wire frames or even code html.  The trust, you talk about, is not based on the design.  It's based on what is written, who is linked, and the way in which the site owner interacts with readers and other blogs.  Trust is built as part of a community - not from the look and feel of the site.

Weblogs are a form of website. The thousands of normal website usability guidelines therefore apply to them, as do this year's top ten design mistakes. But weblogs are also a special genre of website; they have unique characteristics and thus distinct usability problems.

One of a weblog's great benefits is that it essentially frees you from "Web design." You write a paragraph, click a button, and it's posted on the Internet. No need for visual design, page design, interaction design, information architecture, or any programming or server maintenance.

Sentence fragments?  How charming and completely appropriate.  Following design guidelines, the improper use of grammar in this last paragraph would be considered wrong for corporate website.  yet everyone reading "no need for visual design" understands this sentence is continuing a thought.  In many ways, this writing style enhances your trust factor - because you're a person speaking to them, not a consultant writing Strunk and White perfect prose.

Weblogs make having a simple website much easier, and as a result, the number of people who write for the Web has exploded. This is a striking confirmation of the importance of ease of use.

One of the problems with theories is understanding when something is obvious and when it is important.  An apple falling from a tree is not a striking confirmation of the importance of gravy. 

Weblogs' second benefit is that they're a Web-native content genre: they rely on links, and short postings prevail. You don't have to write a full article or conduct original research or reporting. You can simply find something interesting on another site and link to it, possibly with commentary or additional examples. Obviously, this is much easier than running a conventional site, and again indicates the benefits of lowering the barriers to computer use.

As a third benefit, weblogs are part of an ecosystem (often called the Blogosphere) that serves as a positive feedback loop: Whatever good postings exist are promoted through links from other sites. More reader/writers see this good stuff, and the very best then get linked to even more. As a result, link frequency follows a Zipf distribution, with disproportionally more links to the best postings.

Weblogs are also updated.  I believe the first time I read this, the paragraph above said, 'annoyingly" referred to as the Blogosphere.

Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don't apply to such sites, because the readers' prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren't your mother, however, usability becomes important.

Also, while readers of your intranet weblog might know you, usability is important because your readers are on company time.

I don't want to disagree that usability is important - but at this point - it should be made clear that the advice Nielsen is giving is intended primarily for a very narrow portion of the web.  Experts, and those who wish to become acknowledged experts.  These two paragraphs just narrowed the focus from 14 million weblogs to less than a hundred thousand.  That's not representing a very clear transition in the article.

Usability Issues
To reach new readers and respect your existing readers' time constraints, test your weblog against the following usability problems.

1. No Author Biographies
Unless you're a business blog, you probably don't need a full-fledged "about us" section the way a corporate site does. That said, the basic rationale for "about us" translates directly into the need for an "about me" page on a weblog: users want to know who they're dealing with.

It's a simple matter of trust. Anonymous writings have less credence than something that's signed. And, unless a person's extraordinarily famous, it's not enough to simply say that Joe Blogger writes the content. Readers want to know more about Joe. Does he have any credentials or experience in the field he's commenting on? (Even if you don't have formal credentials, readers will trust you more if you're honest about that fact, set forth your informal experience, and explain the reason for your enthusiasm.)

About Me has many functions - some people use it to entertain.  Others use it to inform.  If you want personal publicity, the about me page works as a way to pitch yourself.  Most bloggers, and I feel comfortable saying this, most people who stick at this, learned the ropes from watching others.  Their online personalities and online voices started at other blogs where they commented, or wrote e-mails, or participated in forums. They are well established before they even start.  They have the trust of a community prior to starting their blog.  Nielsen approaches the about page design only from the aspect of someone who has never heard of a blog before.  This approach has its uses - but it he understood the medium, he'd be suggesting that new bloggers take a look around first - long before they every start putting down an about page.

Let me be more clear.  The use of the internet, which he aptly describes below, requires discipline in what you say.  Before you splash your identity up on your blog, make sure what you are writing is a) worth reading, and b) worth discovering.   About Us pages have their place - but let's not pretend that they are the reason that people trust bloggers. Ask Atrios.  Tacitus.  The Yeti.  Demosthenes.  Those are all bloggers that did fine without giving a realisitic view of themselves.  There are thousands more.   

2. No Author Photo
Even weblogs that provide author bios often omit the author photo. A photo is important for two reasons:
    •     It offers a more personable impression of the author. You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you're not trying to hide. Also, users relate more easily to somebody they've seen.
    •     It connects the virtual and physical worlds. People who've met you before will recognize your photo, and people who've read your site will recognize you when you meet in person (say, at a conference -- or the company cafeteria if you're an intranet blogger).
A huge percentage of the human brain is dedicated to remembering and recognizing faces. For many, faces work better than names. I learned this lesson myself in 1987 when I included my photo in a HyperCard stack I authored that was widely disseminated on Mac-oriented BBSs. Over the next two years, countless people came up to me and said, "I liked your stack," having recognized me from the photo.

Also, if you run a professional weblog and expect to be quoted in the press, you should follow the recommendations for using the Web for PR and include a selection of high-resolution photos that photo editors can download.

I'm trying very hard not go off on this one.  There is a time and place for author photos, and it is a matter of personal preference, not usability.  Author photos can help - especially if you are an expert in the field.  Some people like them.  Some people have faces made for radio.  Some women don't want the attention of putting their photo up on line and getting the responses, come-ons, and lewd e-mail.

Is an author photo really important?  Not unless you want it to be.  The high resolution trick is a good one - but do you really want people pulling your photo off the web without your permission?  How relevant is this to even the business blogging population?  Maybe I'm wrong - but this is another example of Nielsen trying to turn weblogs into something they are not.  When I see a photo page, I'm instantly alert as to what the person is trying to sell me.  They usually are - (unless you're a lawyer I know whose picture looks great).

3. Nondescript Posting Titles
Sadly, even though weblogs are native to the Web, authors rarely follow the guidelines for writing for the Web in terms of making content scannable. This applies to a posting's body text, but it's even more important with headlines. Users must be able to grasp the gist of an article by reading its headline. Avoid cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context.

Your posting's title is microcontent and you should treat it as a writing project in its own right. On a value-per-word basis, headline writing is the most important writing you do.

Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting. Even if users see a short abstract along with the headline (as with most search engines), user testing shows that people often read only the headline. In fact, people often read only the first three or four words of a headline when scanning a list of possible places to go. Sample bad headlines:
    •     What Is It That You Want?
    •     Hey, kids! Comics!
    •     Victims Abandoned
Sample good headlines:
    •     Pictures from Die Hunns and Black Halos show
    •     Office Depot Pays United States $4.75 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations
(too long, but even if you only read the first few words, you have an idea of what it's about)
    •     Ice cream trucks as church marketing
This last headline works on a church-related blog. If you're writing an ice cream industry blog, start the headline with the word "church" because it's the information-carrying word within a context of all ice cream, all the time.

In browsing weblog headline listings to extract these examples, I noticed several headlines in ALL CAPS. That's always bad. Reading speed is reduced by 10% and users are put off by the appearance of shouting.

Writing titles for posts is an art, as well as a science.  Many people are bad at it - but I can't imagine anything worse than everyone using the boring titles Nielsen uses as examples.  I'd like to think quite a few of my readers enjoy the fun titles as well as the puzzlers.  Getting the title is part of the game.  It's a way of mixing pop culture references (some of them quite obscure) with modern events, and it's done to help create a sense of community among the "in" readers. That's very important. 

5-10 will be done tomorrow.

This is the crux of the problem.  Nielsen treats weblogs as a genre of website, rather than a subset of community.  He's trying to get everyone to write and post the same with some kind of usability standard for weblogs.  That's great - take his advice if you like it - but don't do it because Nielsen is supposed to be some kind of usability guru.

THE BLOGOSPHERE IS THE FOCUS GROUP.  See what I did there?  10% of you may have dropped off - but the rest of you get the point.  It is the complexity of millions of people trying to sort out what makes sense that matters here - not whether or not you have some Glamour Shots photo up on the left or the right side of your screen. 

And don't get me wrong - I love design.  I'm marrying a designer - but the blogosphere is about the links - the transfer of information - the transparency - not the design.

Good design enables the technology - it is not the technology.

The rest of this critique comes tomorrow.  Stay Tuned! **

**There normally would be a link there.  That's a pop culture reference.