I was intensely disappointed by Homepage Usability, and haven’t gotten around to articulating why. sp!ked’s article “Excuse-ability” does the job for me:
“For web geeks, it’s fun reading what Nielsen has to say about websites that we regularly use, and that some of us might even have designed. But on closer inspection, the book reduces web design to a mundane level.
While some of the book’s guidelines are common sense, others are banal. For example, ‘show the company name and/or logo in a reasonable size and noticeable location’ – and ‘don’t use clever phrases and marketing lingo that make people work too hard to figure out what you’re saying’. This doesn’t express a high opinion of businesses or internet users.”
I really liked “Designing Web Usability” and thought it taught people to think. But Homepage usability isn’t on the same par. The on thing I did liek was the set of heuristics in the front– might be a nice tool for some consultants.
What have others thought of it?