TangleBones

Bob Sawyer has started a con­test to redesign Jakob Nielsen’s web page. The con­test now includes prizes, and is being judged by some seri­ous web design luminaries.

Which is all well and good. But so far the dis­cus­sion is mostly unpro­voked attacks on Jakob him­self. His detrac­tors don’t seem to under­stand that Jakob isn’t a visual designer or that his mus­ings are given with the same gadfly sen­si­bil­i­ties that have made other people so popular.

In other words, lay off Jakob. No, he can’t design his way out of a paper bag, but I know I’ve ben­e­fit­ted from his expe­ri­ence. In fact, the one thing I’ve found that people who crit­i­cize Jakob have in common is hard-​to-​use web pages.