brunobergher::blog

Jakob Nielsen published a few days ago his findings from research on the way users performance differs along the 25-60 years old range.

The article is definitely worth reading, is not long, and brings some interesting information.

In a nutshell, Nielsen found out that, according to his sample of 61 users, user performance (time spent to achieve each task) increases linearly by 0.8% by year, up to this 60 year old mark (beyond that this number increases faster). But the thing that caught my attention the most as this paragraph:

There’s also a covariant: the age at which people started using the Web. Because the Web is relatively new, a 50-year-old might have started using it at age 40, whereas a 30-year-old might have started at age 20. In contrast, by 2050, a 50-year-old will have used the Web since age 5, and thus benefit from 45 years of experience. A 30-year-old user in 2050 will have only 25 years’ Web experience. This added experience might eventually allow older users to catch up and somewhat reduce the 0.8% gap. Although we obviously can’t predict the future, my guess is that the age penalty will drop to around 0.5%/year. Still, this doesn’t matter much for your Web strategy over the next 10 years: the 0.8% level is where we’re at and where we’ll remain for some time.

We design for a medium that is new to anyone, and which is currently more attractive to younger people (for a while). It surely doesn’t affect designing for the web for now, but it’s interesting to consider that in a few decades, older people with effectively have more computer and web experience than young ones, and this will turn the playing field in a different direction.

It’s also worth of notice his assertion that when designing for people older than 60 requires a whole different approach, and perhaps, in some cases, a different interaction flow than from other users. Kind of like a ’seniors only’ line in a supermarket or bank.

(This is the first of what I hope becomes a series of posts on books I finish reading. I hope any of this ends up being useful to someone.)

I don’t plan to review Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability in any new way; 411 people have done it so far in Amazon.com alone. Considering at least 100,000 people have already read this, you can take it for granted that it’s a good book. I guess I’m writing to convince you to read it as soon as possible (if you don’t have already, of course).

Upon receiving it at home, I was surprised to see how thin it is: the Brazilian edition which I bought (I’ll get back to it shortly) is only 127 pages long; it seemed like a very introductory, superficial book. I guess I’m more used to judging a book’s by it’s length than I thought, and got punched in the face with that unfair assumption later on. In fact, the author himself aimed to conceive something ‘that could be read in a single airplane trip’.

Let me just tell you this: just 50 pages on, I was already quoting Krug all day long in discussions at work. His ideas are so simple, make so much sense and are so generic that, if you’re designing/developing interfaces (web-based or not) you’ll see yourself constantly in situations where Krug can help you. His common sense approach just becomes something you take with yourself, and put before the many obscure considerations people end up having when discussing project details.

It’s also interesting to see how the examples in the book—which are only two years old in many cases—are already outdated, while the principles he shares are more up-to-date than ever. His ideal definition of a home page has become the standard template of Web 2.0 sites (big, clear company statements with big call-to-action buttons and links); and even though Krug barely mentions web-apps in the text, everything he writes just fits in perfectly to them.

Summing up: huge recommendation, for anyone involved in sites/software design/development/management/conception.

* Note on the Brazilian edition: if you’re a fellow Brazilian, avoid the AltaBooks edition at all costs. Really. Run from it like you’d run from the devil. Page layout is terrible, with no margins whatsoever, reaaaaaaaaaally long sentences, the footnote references are all screwed up, a lot of bad translations. In many cases the book tears apart the usability principles Krug is explaining in that very page. I’m thinking of warning him about this, if can manage to get in touch.

If you can read the English in this blog, you deserve a good edition—as I believe the original one is. So go for it.