What if Jakob Nielsen had a blog?

Generic Commands

One of the big criticisms of iPhone version 1.0's user experience is that it doesn't support cut-copy-paste, even though users definitely expect these commands in any modern design.
The cut-copy-paste triad wasn't the original generic editing command set. The original designers at Xerox PARC used move-copy-delete. If you think about it, these two triads both map to all common user actions, they just do it in different ways

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/generic-commands.html

The End of SEO is Not Near - Kim Krause Berg

The End of SEO is Not Near

SEO’s had lots of opinions about Jakob Nielsen’s latest future projections for their industry noted in Bright SEO career prospects could dim . SeobytheSea owner, Bill Slawski, conveyed his usual calm during a thread of comments in Sphinn, with thoughts like:

Funny thing in that interview is that he suggests a shift in search paradigms at the search engines from information retrieval approaches to a popularity based one (which is what PageRank was about). That happened with the introduction of PageRank almost ten years ago. He’s a little late to the party. From a lot of what I’m seeing, there’s a strong shift back towards an information extraction and retrieval approach, and towards a strong use of data mining, machine learning, and the use of statistical models based upon user searching and browsing activity. PageRank, which we’ve probably talked about too much lately, is increasingly becoming less valuable these days.

And while he insisted in that interview that personalized search will never work, the search engines are trying their hardest to prove him wrong.”

http://cre8pc.com/blog/archives/373

Bright SEO career prospects could dim

I am pessimistic about the long-term prospects for SEO jobs, because the basics of search engine optimization are fairly simple and ought to be part of the core competency of anybody who makes a living in Web design, Internet marketing, or writing for the Web. You shouldn't need a special consultant to make a Web site that follows simple guidelines. Of course, I have been trying to teach people to write for the Web for 10 years already, ever since we discovered the main guidelines in 1997. And most sites still get it wrong. So maybe I am wrong when I predict that Internet marketers will stop being clueless in 10 years. In any case, even if most sites eventually learn how to do their own SEO, it will be good for your career to have spent several years working with the most effective component of Internet marketing. You will be able to broaden your scope and take on other duties, based on your evolving knowledge of what works on the Web and what customers want (they want what they search for!).

http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/specialreports/itemployment/0,39055182,62033662,00.htm

Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings

Words are usually the main moneymakers on a website. Selecting the first 2 words for your page titles is probably the highest-impact ROI-boosting design decision you make in a Web project. Front-loading important keywords trumps most other design considerations.

Writing the first 2 words of summaries runs a close second. Here, too, you might want to succumb to passive voice if it lets you pull key terms into the lead.

The importance of good page titles and summaries goes far beyond traditional search engine optimization (SEO) and its narrow focus on getting a high GYM rating (that is, a high ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft search listings). Usable and scannable results in your site's own search engine greatly impacts your website's conversion rate. And search usability is key for intranet productivity.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passive-voice.html

Multiple-User Simultaneous Testing (MUST)

The #1 rule of all user testing is to test with representative customers. Panels rarely meet this requirement; they're composed of people who get paid a pittance to sit like drones and complete online tests. If you're targeting a very low-level audience, then this might be worth a gamble. But not if you 're a B2B site selling to construction engineers or hospital pharmacists. Not even if you're a normal B2C e-commerce site.

For fun, some of my colleagues once signed up with a panel operator. Despite being fully truthful in their responses to the initial questionnaire (which many people aren't when they register for panels), they were assigned to several studies for which they were not even remotely in the target audience. These "studies" are often a form of voodoo usability that generate misleading results.

Even if a panel operator could get you representative customers, automated studies are still a shadow of real usability research because you can't sit next to the user. Direct observation is invaluable, both for seeing the details that would never get reported in a chart, and for gaining the deep understanding of each user's individual behavior.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/multiple-user-testing.html

Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances

Intranet usability has improved substantially, yes. But is it good enough? No. We started out at an extreme low, with intranets being the impoverished cousins of websites: no company investment in design and usability, pure chaos in navigation and IA. Things are indeed better now — 77% of intranet teams say they get adequate management support. But at most companies, the intranet user experience is still nowhere near what it needs to be to maximize employee productivity.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intranet-usability.html

Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?

Ruthlessly editing introductory paragraphs might be good advice, but why not just kill them off completely? Cutting word count seems a weasely approach.

Intro text has a valid role in that it helps set the context for content and thus answer the question: What's the page about?

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html