Item — HN Reader

This is something of an ad hominem. Jakob's site having poor usability does not automatically invalidate his usability arguments.

See this article for his own view on the matter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/09/guardianwee...

And then even if we assume that the quality of the site proves anything about Jakob's advice and that the site was intended to be "usable", the observation that the site is unusable for Hank still doesn't prove anything useful.

The whole point of most of Jakob's writing is that empirical evidence from watching typical users in your target market actually use your site is what matters. Hank's opinion doesn't matter unless he's (a) one of the users that Jakob is targeting and (b) representative of them. For which we have no data.

I am not a fan of Hank's writing.

2 comments

I'm not willing to call it an ad hominem, because I've always assumed that implied in his articles is "my site is how you should do it." Which I don't agree with.

His techniques for bolding text and frequently making lists means I know what information the author thinks is important, and I am more likely to remember it when scanning a page. But I don't think you should optimize a page for scanning when you're really presenting an essay. Essays shouldn't scream at you; they should be memorable because the ideas as written struck a chord.

When some of the text is screaming at me, it's had to focus on the rest.

"I've always assumed that implied in his articles is "my site is how you should do it.""

But why? He doesn't say that anywhere. He doesn't even lay down rules about how you should build any site. He's all about carrying out user testing. He suggests techniques that he thinks are likely to work, but he always qualifies these opinions.

What I find particularly irritating about Hank's blog post is that he seems to me to be saying "useit is ugly" rather more than he is saying "useit is unusable" - the latter if provable is relevant, but Jakob's articles are not about beauty - only usability.

Because he has a site on usability, and the presentation is unlike other sites I've seen. I assume these are his ideas in action.

Agreed. There is no other way to possibly interpret his site's look as a statement on how he thinks you should present content sites that aim to have free content lead to paid content sales.

His audience is probably older, and therefore his text is large. He could use a little line-height, but I find the site to be readable and the text size is controllable with browser settings, so I don't see the problem.

When I go back to an article that I have already read, I find that the bolded parts help me find the section I was looking for.

I believe that Hanks post is stating the you cannot separate aesthetics from usability. If the site is unreadable to Hank it has failed to be usable for at least him.

But Hank's not making an attack on the usability but on the readability. .

He's merely critiquing the aesthetics. The whole 'unreadable' jazz is histrionics.

Now for a pukka critique of Jakob's site take a look at DESIGN EYE for the Usability Guy http://www.designbyfire.com/000094.html