Interview with Jakob Nielsen
Over on SitePoint.com, there’s a new interview posted with usability guru Jakob Nielsen talking about some of his thoughts on Ajax, usability and advertising, and ad formats on the web.
The questions range from “What do you think of the current implementations of AJAX
(Google Maps, Writely, Google Suggest, Zimbra, etc.) on the Web today?” to “When a company finally is ready to invest in promotions, what’s your opinion of the usability of the syndicated ad formats, like Google AdSense, that are so popular on the Web today?” His opinions on Ajax are interesting though:
(When asked about current implementations of Ajax) They are irrelevant for the vast majority of business web sites. (And by “business web site” I also mean sites for government agencies and non-profits.)
A business site will profit much more from writing better headlines than from sticking a programming trick on its pages. […] It’s important to remember that most web sites are not used repeatedly. Usually, users will visit a given page only once. This means that the efficiency of any given operation takes a back seat to the discoverability and learnability of the feature.
He does, however, see hope on the horizion that Ajax definitely has potential to enhance just about any site - just not with the ways it’s being used now.