Good information architecture makes users less alienated and suppressed by technology. It simultaneously increases human satisfaction and your company's profits. Very few jobs allow you to do both at the same time, so enjoy.
Interpretation
Effective information architecture enhances user experience and boosts business success.
Jakob Nielsen emphasizes the significance of good information architecture in technology, indicating that it not only alleviates user discomfort but also improves overall satisfaction, leading to increased profits for companies. He highlights the rare opportunity in certain jobs to positively impact both users and business outcomes simultaneously, which should be appreciated and valued.
In practice
During a tech conference presentation on user interface design.
Developing fewer features allows you to conserve development resources and spend more time refining those features that users really need. Fewer features mean fewer things to confuse users, less risk of user errors, less description and documentation, and therefore simpler Help content. Removing any one feature automatically increases the usability of the remaining ones.
Usability rules the web. Simply stated, if the customer can't find a product, then he or she will not buy it.
Throughout this book, we've been evangelizing simplicity, but ironically, the practice of simplicity is not simple. It is easy to build a bulky design by adding layer upon layer of navigation and features; it's much more difficult to create simple, graceful designs. Paring designs to essential elements while maintaining elegance and functionality requires courage and discipline.
Ultimately, users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop.
On the Internet, it's survival of the easiest.... Give users a good experience and they're apt to turn into frequent and loyal customers. But ... it's easy to turn to another supplier in the face of even a minor hiccup. Only if a site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around.
People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts. Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good.
Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
If we don't take an approach that looks holistically at the form a video-game platform should take in the future, then we're not able to sustain Nintendo 10 years down the road.
The Internet in the 21st Century is as important to our future as highways were in the 20th Century. Like a highway, the Internet must remain free and open for all - not determined by the highest bidders.
That has always been the objective of Apple: to do things that really enrich people's lives. That you look back on and you wonder, 'How did I live without this?'
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