Item — HN Reader

"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.

2 comments

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.