In terms of usability consultancy companies, it doesn’t get much more prestigious than the Nielsen Norman Group (www.nngroup.com). The company was founded six years ago by several leading practitioners (including the fathers of the modern day field of usability engineering, Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman). Every couple of years the company goes "on tour" to preach the usability gospel to the masses. I’ve just returned from the 5-day UsabilityWeek 2004 conference in Sydney and thought I’d share my thoughts.

There were 145 attendees at the conference, although not all were there for all five days. The conference was structured in two halves - the first three days was a usability boot camp and the other two days consisted of a number of full day tutorials on specific usability topics (I attended Intranet and E-mail newsletter usability). The majority of the attendees were from Australia (there were 12 kiwis) and the biggest number of delegates were from the finance and government sectors. This is a good indication of where money is being spent in usability. Finance companies realise the money they can save when creating designs that are intuitive and easy-to-use, and government realises that it has a duty to ensure that online services are usable for all its citizens.

The conference content was useful. I’m not exactly the typical attendee for a how-to usability course, but the usability methodologies were well described. The trouble is that people with a little bit of knowledge can be more dangerous than those with none! The tutorials were a little bit too structured, the presenters were simply walking us through the reports we received as we walked in the door. The main benefit I got from the conference was definitely from meeting people.

I have to confess to being a bit surprised about the company itself. For such a weighty reputation, they only have a very small team of eleven people. They are also entirely virtual - they don’t even have an office. It seems that the entire company is run on the reputation of the founding principals. They have no sales staff, and only a single admin/HR/legal person.

To be honest I don’t think I would attend again, but am certainly glad to have gone once. It was nice to meet Jakob, a person who had a lot to do with me pursuing career in usability engineering. Plus, it gave me a good excuse to see the State of Origin live at Telstra Stadium! (Just don’t tell Sam).

Trent