YA JN Post
Okay, so an IA friend of mine attended a usability conference in sunny San Diego recently, and happened to take part in an interesting Jakob Nielsen discussion. After spending 20 minutes discussing why designers hate him, someone who apparently knows Jakob jumped in, letting them in on a little secret. It was divulged that Jakob is not actually as much of an ass as he makes himself out to be, and often-times, his outrageous statements are usually made in an attempt to get any reaction out of the community he can. And I can see that. When a two-year old is not responding to your requests, you make a harsh statement that you really don’t mean in order to elicit a response from them. So if Jakob feels that what are actually his relatively moderate views on usability are important but ignored, it would make sense to make some outrageous claim in order to get the community to listen. The side result is that the more press he gets from it, the more he can charge for his seminars (with a rumored $20k per engagement). Just a tip, I guess. Take what he says with a grain of salt, and I think it’s even more reason to ignore him.