[thelist] Nielsen Usability Reports

[Maisha Walker]

Hello everyone,

I just received Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox with a critique of the
presidential campaign email newsletters.

The full story links to a page selling an Email Newsletter Usability report
"127 design guidelines for subscription interfaces, newsletter content and
account maintenance based on user research" for about $300:
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/newsletters/

Actually there are several usability reports available at various prices on
specific topics here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/


Theoretically if it's done well these kinds of reports could lead to very
valuable data and some additional standardization in our efforts to make our
interfaces more effective and user friendly.

But I'm wondering if anyone has purchased the Email Newsletter Usability
report or any of the others and what they thought of the data.

Just to ground this in some context, I would expect to find in these
reports:

- numerous examples - screenshots of the subject at hand, from different
sources
- a user testing study having been conducted on each example with a
reasonable enough number of people to provide validity
- text describing what problems the users had
- statistical information supporting that text
- recommendations/conclusions based on the statistical results of the study


based on those expectations would I be disappointed or a satisfied customer
if I bought one of these reports?

are there additional/different expectations you think are more valid?


Best,
Maisha