The death of the big idea
Brian Millar
Jakob Nielsen is a geek hero, a useability expert who spends his life strapping people into eyetracking headgear and watching how their attention skitters across a computer screen. He recently conducted an amazing study for the US Census Bureau. It had redesigned its website to include a giant population ticker in the top right. Nielsen asked his subjects to look at the page and tell him what the population of the US was.
Only 14% of users managed to do it. The clock was enormous, in a font size twice as big...