Jakob Nielsen is a smart guy. The godfather of web usability knows his stuff. You only need to read his column (www.useit.com) to know that he knows he’s smart. He tends to where it on his sleeve, but he’s earned it – and I enjoy reading it.

As far as usability goes, he’s the king. He’s trying to be a real intranet guru, but he really has not proved he can move beyond usability. He over-emphasizes usability – which is an important aspect, but not the most important.

In my years of working on intranets, I have calculated the value of usability at about 15% of an intranet’s value – with content and planning & resources (governance, process, publishing, funding, staffing, etc.) representing 30% each.

Usability however has its place and Dr. Nielsen has written a great piece on standard deviation and the number of users to test when doing usability testing (see Quantitative Studies: How Many Users to Test?). In short, Nielsen says that testing “20 users typically offers a reasonably tight confidence interval.”

Read the rest of my article Usability overkillat my Intranet Insider blog at Communitelligence.com.

RELATED READING:

When to use what research tools

Leading an intranet redesign

Nexus of Intranet Success

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:  I celebrated my 7^th anniversary with my darling wife today! (That’s 13 years together now; 2 kids; 3 houses; and far too many air miles and not enough champagne!). We sipped Verve Cliqout next to the creek at sunset…  funny how anniversaries slow down as you age up with celebration in close proximity to yet more and more kids!).

Speaking of kids… my five-year old Rachel just graduated from pre-school and will be starting kindergarten in September (French bilingual kindergarten). *Sniff* they grow-up so fast! Congratulations sweetheart!

Why is the Ukraine in the final eight at the World Cup? How is that they’ve had such an easy schedule and teams like Mexico and Czech Republic drew such a tough schedule? Man, great goal by Beckham…. Heart-breaking to see the Aussies go down like that with 4 seconds remaining… I’ve never seen a team such as Italy so undeserving of their position, year after year. I’m not predicting that Ghana will upset Brazil, but if anyone can do it they can do it (though I wouldn’t rule out Argentina or Spain…).

A hearty welcome to our new clients at Prescient Digital Media: Alberta Family Health Practice and the Air Canada Pilot’s Association – welcome aboard!