Top all-time · #38
Nielsen Norman Group
Company blog · nngroup.com/articlesdesign
Nielsen Norman Group is the company blog at nngroup.com, writing about design. Since 2008, 672 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,039 times, most often “The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite NN/g for usability research and guidelines, such as checkboxes vs radio buttons, response times, progressive disclosure and computer skill levels, mostly as evidence in discussions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A leader in the user experience field, NN/g conducts groundbreaking research, trains and certifies UX practitioners, and provides UX consulting to clients.
Most-linked posts?
- The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think39 people · 59 mentions · first linked 2016-11-14
- Response Times: The 3 Important Limits27 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2016-01-01
- You Only Need to Test with 5 Users (2000)20 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2015-12-20
- /15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2017-04-11
- Usability Heuristics (1994, updated 2024)14 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2016-10-15
- Dark Mode vs. Light Mode14 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2020-02-04
- Flat Design: Its Origins, Its Problems, and Why Flat 2.0 Is Better for Users12 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2015-12-28
- The 90-9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Online Communities (2006)12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2016-01-20
- The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)10 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2017-03-20
- Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-06-30
What Hacker News says?
Great article, and terrible idea. Wonder why the UI guidelines were bent here. It's astonishing how many web designers have no idea about the difference between inclusive and mutually exclusive options. I see checkboxes used all the time when they should be radio buttons. It's not rocket surgery. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/checkboxes-vs-radio-buttons...
Comment linking /articles/checkboxes-vs-radio-buttons/
on “In loving memory of square checkbox”Submitted Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26 as a story · 752 points
HN discussionI remember i have read this a year ago. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/tesla-big-touchscreen/ A Case Study of Car-Dashboard User Interface And it was discussed here before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19968970 Im curious, have any of these problems been fixed? - Soft Buttons That Demand Attention - Poor Target Design - Target Size - Accidental Touches - Map Always on Screen
Comment linking /articles/tesla-big-touchscreen/
on “Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls”Submitted In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds have not improved as a story · 719 points
HN discussion> What happened to actually communicating with users to learn more about how they use the product? https://www.nngroup.com/articles/first-rule-of-usability-don... "watch users as they attempt to perform tasks"
Comment linking /articles/first-rule-of-usability-dont-listen-to-users/
on “Wacom tablets track every app you open”Submitted You Only Need to Test with 5 Users (2000) as a story · 523 points
HN discussionI think this change came from the UX team. Relevant articles: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/simplicity-vs-choice/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/short-term-memory-and-web-u... https://www.nngroup.com/articles/working-memory-external-mem...
Comment linking /articles/working-memory-external-memory/
on “Someone at YouTube needs glasses”Submitted The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think as a story · 512 points
HN discussion> I'm pretty sure I could train a non-programmer to do a specialized type of programming task in a few months if it were a crisis even though that person doesn't have a computer science degree. Then you’re either underestimating the complexity of programming or overestimating general skill level: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ """One of the difficult tasks was to schedule a meeting room in a…
Comment linking /articles/computer-skill-levels/
on “YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content”Submitted PDF: Still unfit for human consumption, 20 years later as a story · 396 points
HN discussionYes! More along these lines: https://usv.com/post/an-idea-about-texting https://www.ouvre-boite.com/messaging/ https://medium.com/@chrismessina/conversational-commerce-92e... http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109389515411/your-phone-interfa... http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-t... http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/ A text based or "messaging" UI is often simpler and more effecti…
Comment linking /articles/anti-mac-interface/
on “Magic”Submitted Flat UI Elements Attract Less Attention and Cause Uncertainty as a story · 354 points
HN discussionRecent examples I encountered include (not necessarily the best examples, just that I recall off-hand): - Neo4j docs: https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/introduction/cy... - RabbitMQ docs (esp. that sidebar): https://www.rabbitmq.com/docs/reliability - Argo Workflows UI (no link, as you need to login). - CV from "senior UX engineer" I received yesterday in response to a job ad I posted. - Just now I found…
Comment linking /articles/low-contrast/
on “Touchscreens are out, and tactile controls are back”Submitted The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996) as a story · 295 points
HN discussionFor fun, I did a search for "user interface" before:1996-06-01 . I found a paper that was definitely taking the perspective that the "user interface" encompasses all the ways in which the user can accomplish something via the software. It rated the effectiveness of a user interface in terms of the time taken to complete various specific tasks. (While remarking that other metrics matter to the concept too, and also m…
Comment linking /articles/iterative-design/
on “GIMP 3.0”Submitted The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016) as a story · 275 points
HN discussionSomewhat surprisingly (to me), this is also found for User Interfaces [0]. The best initial design for a User Interface for a feature phone was done by designers who were not shown previous work by other designers. Iterations based on previous designs were only better if they were shown the "winning" initial design". [0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/parallel-design/
Comment linking /articles/parallel-design/
on “Undergraduate shows that searches within hash tables can be much faster”Submitted Best Font for Online Reading: No Single Answer as a story · 229 points
HN discussionIn design this is called “the illusion of completeness.” “The illusion of completeness happens when the visible content on the screen appears to be complete, when in fact more information exists outside of the viewable area.”[0] It’s a designer’s job to create cues that ensure this never happens. [0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/illusion-of-completeness/
Comment linking /articles/illusion-of-completeness/
on “Perfectly Cropped”Submitted Why Personas Fail as a story · 182 points
HN discussionYou all but certainly overestimate typical technological literacy. About 5% of computer users have "advanced" literacy, defined as "Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. The goal of the problem may have to be defined by the respondent,…
Comment linking /articles/computer-skill-levels/
on “Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics”Submitted Top Web Design Mistakes of 1999 as a story · 178 points
HN discussion> There's been a lot more pushback on the scrolling decision than I had anticipated. Even if tmux is in theory a better solution, it's not such a radically better solution that the benefits outweigh the switching cost. Terminals with scrollback have been around at least 30 years at this point [1], and scrollback is by far the majority use mode. You're asking 95%+ of your potential userbase to spend a bunch of time r…
Comment linking /articles/end-of-web-design/
on “Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust”Submitted The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques as a story · 155 points
HN discussionUsers do notice speed issues in apps and websites. The NNGroup has done studies with users to gather reactions to slow websites in 1997 and 2010. They remain relevant in 2021 to both apps and websites: " Users really care about speed in interaction design " [1] A few weeks ago someone on HN shared the reflections of the developer of SumatraPDF - a native Windows PDF reader that is small, lightweight and performant (…
Comment linking /articles/website-response-times/
on “Psst: Fast Spotify client with native GUI, without Electron, built in Rust”Submitted Campbell's Law: The dark side of metric fixation as a story · 147 points
HN discussionGeneric statements such as "most people don't care [...] extra 10-100ms for the UI" need to be supported by evidence, especially since those 100ms are added to existing latency and 100ms is considered the threshold where operations feel instantaneous [1]. Still, for certain things 100ms is too much. Android famously had a round-trip audio latency of a bit above 100ms which made it a poor choice for music apps - in c…
Comment linking /articles/response-times-3-important-limits/
on “Psst: Fast Spotify client with native GUI, without Electron, built in Rust”Submitted The Anti-Mac Interface (1996) as a story · 145 points
HN discussion< 1 second is good but 0.1 seconds is what we should really be aiming for: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-...
Comment linking /articles/response-times-3-important-limits/
on “The Website Obesity Crisis”Submitted Everything I Needed to Know About Good UX I Learned While Working in Restaurants as a story · 125 points
HN discussion
