Brave UX: Jakob Nielsen, PhD - Plainspoken, Hard-hitting and Unorthodox

Jakob Nielsen addresses some of the criticism he’s faced 🎤, calls on UXers to urgently adopt AI 🐛, and shares why he believes the commoditisation of UX is a good thing 📈.

Highlights include:

⭐ Are you surprised by how much you’ve offended some people?
⭐ Why do UXers need a greater sense of urgency about adopting AI?
⭐ Were the hiring practices at your previous company elitist?
⭐ What is the state of UX today and where is the growth potential?
⭐ Will AI impede our ability to develop our professional judgement?

#UX #UXDesign #UXAI #UXR #UXResearch #UserResearch #DesignLeadership #UXTigers #BraveUX

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Who is Jakob Nielsen?

Jakob is the founder of UX Tigers 🐯, the website and associated substack he uses to bring his 41 years of UX knowledge and experience to the world, in what he has described as a plainspoken, hard-hitting and not bowing to orthodoxy kind-of-way.

Before founding UX Tigers, Jakob was the co-founder and principal - for 25 years - of a rather well known UX consultancy, the Nielsen Norman Group 📜.

His other notable roles include being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, and a member of the research staff at Bell Communications Research 🔔 - one of the world’s top three HCI labs in the 1990s.

Jakob is known for many other things, among which are being the founder of the discount usability movement, the foundational 10 usability heuristics for user interface design, and the eponymously named Jakob’s Law of Internet User Experience 🏛️.

He is the holder of no less than 79 United States patents and the author of 8 books, including the best-selling “Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity”, “Usability Engineering”, and the pioneering “Hypertext and Hypermedia” 📚.

In 2013, Jakob received the Lifetime Achievement Award for HCI Practice from ACM SIGCHI and in 2024 he was named a “Titan of Human Factors” by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 🏆.

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Find Jakob here:

LinkedIn:   / jakobnielsenphd  
Website: https://www.uxtigers.com/

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00:00 Teaser
00:17 Show welcome
00:54 Jakob’s introduction
02:38 Why tigers?
03:07 Are you surprised by how much you’ve offended some people?
05:03 How did working as a UX consultant constrain what you could say publicly?
08:12 Have you always seen yourself as a provocateur in the field of UX?
11:47 Is it clear to you in advance what the push-back to what you say will be?
14:00 Do you want to address any misconceptions about what you’ve recently said?
17:46 What influence did your parents’ profession have on your own?
19:44 What gave Bell Communications Research’s job offer the edge over Apple’s?
23:43 Did you predict pursuing HCI in college would lead to such a successful career?
27:13 When and how did you meet Don Norman?
29:13 How do you characterise your relationship with Don Norman?
31:23 Do you hope to have the same impact on the UX of AI as you have previously?
36:47 Why do UXers need a greater sense of urgency about adopting AI?
39:56 Are there any valid reasons why UXers cannot start using AI today?
42:45 Do you see AI having the capability to accurately model human behaviour?
46:15 Are criticisms that UX research is slow and costly fair and accurate?
49:38 Why can’t organisations see the hidden cost of bad UX they’re carrying?
56:05 How will AI create UX unicorns and redefine who is a UXer?
01:01:45 Will AI impede our ability to develop our professional judgement?
01:06:26 Were the hiring practices at your previous company elitist?
01:13:00 Can UXers outside of big tech be successful with less sophisticated skills?
01:15:17 How successful has the field of UX been over the past 40 years?
01:16:42 What is the state of UX today and where is the growth potential?
01:19:07 Is the commodification of UX good or a bad thing?
01:20:41 What do you hope you’ll be most remembered for?
01:24:48 Closing out the show - Thanks, Jakob!

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Hosted by Brendan Jarvis:

LinkedIn:   / brendanjarvis  
Website: https://thespaceinbetween.co.nz/
Twitter:   / brendanjarvis