Give Teens a Little More Credit, Neilsen
I'm really unimpressed by Jakob Neilsen after reading his "Usability of Websites for Teenagers" article. He finds that teens only have a success rate of 55% on selected websites compared to a 66% success rate of adult users. He also concludes that many of our assumptions about teen use of the Internet are wrong. He says, "Teenagers are not in fact superior Web geniuses who can use anything a site throws at them." But there's a flaw in Neilsen's study. The teens he used don't represent the average teen population.
The average teen used for this study only spends 5-10 hours per week online. A Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited study found that the average teen spends 16.7 hours per week online (excluding email). That's double, even triple the time Neilsen's participants spend online! So already his little study loses validity in my mind. Add this to the websites he chose, McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, Alzheimer's Association...what teen visits these sites?? Teens eat at McD's and drink Pepsi, they don't visit the corporate site. I'm willing to bet that teens did a fine job of navigating through websites geared toward their demographic like BBC Teens, MTV, American Eagle Outfitters and Volcom.
He also says that the people designing the websites spend a lot of time online and the teens they know have similar characteristics, and basically these teens don't represent the general teen population. But they do. If Neilsen would have taken the time to more carefully select a representative sample, he might have come up with very different conclusions. Teens are a lot more Internet-savvy than he thinks.
The average teen used for this study only spends 5-10 hours per week online. A Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited study found that the average teen spends 16.7 hours per week online (excluding email). That's double, even triple the time Neilsen's participants spend online! So already his little study loses validity in my mind. Add this to the websites he chose, McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, Alzheimer's Association...what teen visits these sites?? Teens eat at McD's and drink Pepsi, they don't visit the corporate site. I'm willing to bet that teens did a fine job of navigating through websites geared toward their demographic like BBC Teens, MTV, American Eagle Outfitters and Volcom.
He also says that the people designing the websites spend a lot of time online and the teens they know have similar characteristics, and basically these teens don't represent the general teen population. But they do. If Neilsen would have taken the time to more carefully select a representative sample, he might have come up with very different conclusions. Teens are a lot more Internet-savvy than he thinks.
2 Comments:
I had some similar reactions when I read the Nielsen article, but then I said to myself, “I really don’t have time for this.”
Nielsen has so much to say on so many things, and I have to admit that he has superior insight to web design. I’m not trying to excuse an experiment with flawed sampling, but my indifference comes from a different place.
I really don’t want lists of hundreds of usability tips to spark so much analysis-paralysis that the website never gets built. We can’t make everyone happy, so we just need to do our best to make our site usable for as many people as possible.
By SEPARight, at 11:45 PM
I completely agree. Check out the cool on-line journals that teens love. You will see animation, interactive content, and a language close to English. The teens that use these sites can make them do anything. This is anecdotal evidence, I know. But the fact is his sample does not represent the general population.
By TNHegemon, at 7:40 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home