Is Jakob Nielsen the comeback kid?
Over the past year Jakob Nielsen, the king of web usability, has come under fire for being out-of-date, leading to some people *cough* NMA *cough* to ask: Is Jakob Nielsen is still relevant today?
Well if his latest post on useit.com, agile development projects and usability, is anything to go by then not only is he back but he's a lot more forward thinking then most of the usability community.
Nielsen tackles usability's place in the agile software development process and argues that usability professionals need a change in mindset to keep pace. It's about time! With the getting real values evanglised by 37Signals you'll be forgiven for thinking that usability testing is dead.
Of course this isn't what 37Signals mean at all, they are a bunch of very smart developer who can get things done, and live the values of getting real, whist still factoring usability into their development process. They do this because their base level of understanding of usability is way higher then most of the web 2.0 start up community. After all they wrote the book on defensive design
In order for usability professionals to meet the challenges of the future of the web, ubiquitous computing and ever smaller project life cycles we need to be smart. We need to get real, look at the business opportunities around us and change our business models to offer tighter user involvement activities. More even, we need to get on the bandwagon.
Nielsen may be a veteran of the web-gone-by but by George, I think he's making an excellent point.
