Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for December 17 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html
		
Summary:
AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content
often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design
resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most
profitable.
				
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Usability Week 2008 conference

  > New York, April 7-12
  > London, May 19-24
  > San Francisco, June 16-21
  > Melbourne, July 21-26

In-depth training:
  > 3-day Intensive Camp: Usability in Practice
  > 3-day Immersion: Tog on Interaction Design

Specialized full-day tutorials:

  > Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability
  > Application Usability (two days)
  > Intranet Usability (two days)
  > Websites That Sell
  > E-Mail Newsletter Usability
  > Writing for the Web

If your department has any year-end budget left, ask to spend some of
it on usability training ...

As always in even-numbered years, we have a conference in Australia. I
love going there (*extremely* friendly people), but it's so expensive that
we can only come every two years. Next chance 2010.

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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HOLIDAY GIFT TO SUBSCRIBERS

I have a holiday gift for you to thank you for being a loyal subscriber to
the Alertbox email newsletter and for your support over the years: a free
copy of "BEYOND ALT TEXT", our report on usability for users with
disabilities.

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility

Despite the keyword used in the download URL, I am tired of seeing the
discussion framed purely in terms of accessibility. What matters is how
*easy* websites are to use for disabled users. This is why we conducted
user testing with this target audience, just like we do with any other
customer segment.

As an analogy, consider a website that only displays correctly in IE
version 7. This site would be inaccessible for a Firefox user. If we
recoded the site to be compatible with other browsers, it would suddenly
become accessible for our sample user. Fine, but as we know from countless
usability studies, this user might still be lost on the site and leave
without ever buying anything.

Accessibility is insufficient to get business from disabled customers. You
also need to emphasize *usability*, which is difficult for people who
listen to an audio version of your content or who see it through a tiny
peephole in a screen magnifier. But that's what we tested.

Please take advantage of my gift and improve the usability of your site
for disabled users, many of whom are ready to give you money if only they
could use your site.

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DON NORMAN'S NEW BOOK

The newest book from Nielsen Norman Group, "The Design of Future Things",
by Dr. Donald A. Norman, is now shipping from bookstores in the United
States:

  > http://www.useit.com/books/futurethings