There is a new usability expert designers should be paying attention to, and its not Jacob.

Jacob Nielsen, the outspoken, usability “guru” was quite the controversial figure in the late 90’s, and to some extent in the early 00’s. Espousing his usability truths as absolute gospel, Nielsen was lambasted and admired in roughly equal parts by a wide spectrum of web professionals. The most controversial aspect of Jacob’s writing was, to my mind, the extent he wished to inform the practise of design from a position well outside the design profession itself, and lets just say the results weren’t pretty.

To refresh your memory you may be familiar with his 1999 book “Designing Web Usability”, or his 2001 effort “Homepage Usability”. You may also recall his (in)famous Alterbox piece “Flash: 99% Bad” published in 2000.

Bad memories coming back?

Sorry.

Thankfully, its now 2006 and the web, designers, and the usability movement have generally moved on.

I believe designers and other web professionals still need a source of usability research and opinion to inform their decisions, however. While we as designers do our best to monitor trends, learn from experience and generally stay informed, there is still a place for usability research that single designers or design teams couldn’t carry out on their own.

Enter Jared Spool and his UIE team. (Its a shame the first thing that hits you is the decidedly bland design of their homepage - guys, hire a designer! - but don’t let that put you off.) I feel that Jared and his UIE team have done some of the best work regarding web usability to date. The UIE Brain Sparks blog, for instance, is a source of lots of interesting ideas and tidbits that will help you design better web sites.

You can also forget about all those bad vibes you might have got from Jacob, the UIE guys and gals seem a world away in that regard.

The biggest contribution of the UIE team, to my mind, is their work in coming up with a conceptual framework for how users navigate content rich sites and making it very easy to understand. It’s called “Designing for scent” and their report of the same name (US$30.99) explains the concept in full. (I have no relationship with the UIE team, but some research is worth paying for!).

When you’ve worked on sites with thousands of pages, several major entrance points, and many different sub-sections, having a guiding philosophy regarding usability is absolutely invaluable.

I personally learnt a lot from the report regarding ‘scent’, and it continues to inform my work today. Some of the early examples in the report are quite dated, but fortunately the lessons learned are still extremely relevant, and should form the basis of sound web design principles for some time to come. Check out the blurb towards the end of this page for what to expect from the report.

So what separates Jared and his UIE team from the usability “gurus” of yore?

Well, for one thing, they come across as friendly, helpful, insightful, down-to-earth people, not experts preaching from the pulpit.

They set out to answer questions designers have about what works best. They don’t assert their opinion as gospel or insist on a my-way-or-the-highway approach to usability.

Instead, they provide a research driven, easy to understand conceptual framework for designing big web sites, including some fundamental tools that any designer worth their salt should have in their toolbox.

Sounds like something of interest to you? If so then you might like to keep an eye on their blog (rss) or check out their publications.

I’ve certainly found them helpful, and hopefully you do too!