Jakob Nielson announced today that the input from just two users on your website could vastly improve your chance of making correct UI decisions.

Polls Reflect Jakob’s Findings

I thought this great timing for one of my polls that asks, “Have you ever watched at least five people complete a task on your website?” Right now, looking at the results 38% of you have said no to this poll. There may be more than you that would have said yes if the question had ask if you had seen just two, but I am guessing many of you will still say no. Getting my analysis could be an easy way for you to get at least one new person, and it’s from one who knows many common usability mistakes made.

Another finding was that many people don’t know how to make fonts bigger using their browser. On my poll, 34% said they don’t even use that feature in a browser. Most likely because they don’t know how. If you are using extra small fonts on your site, now might be the time to change this. Also, if you are one of those webmasters that include the adjustable font size icon/tool on your site, you may want reconsider its value.  Jakob found many people do not even know what it’s for.

Why User Input is Essential

So here is a great reason why observing a user is essential. Jakob found that sites designed by just one designer, and no observed user input, equaled about a 25% success rate for having a high quality user interface. In fact he compared it to to flipping a coin, the coin having the advantage over the designer in this case.

On the flip side though, one designer could be extremely accurate, and create an extremely high quality user interface. To accomplish this all they really need is the input of others. Jakob in fact goes to say “the smallest amount of empirical observation of real users quadrupled the probability of being right“. Knowing this, how many people do you want to observe using your site now?

Your Users are Not As Smart As You May Think

Understanding your users could be the hardest task. They may be as smart as you, they may even be smarter than you, but according to Jakobs findings, odds are good that they are not as current to the technologies that you like to use on your site as your users are. A great example of this is a RSS feed. Everyone has heard of RSS right? Well maybe most, but I can guarantee, many have know clue what to do with it, or even how to use it.

These are all great insights revealed by Jakob, but if you have done a few user observations to your site, you may already know this.

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