Why useit.com got Chosen for Redesign

Five reasons:

• useit.com is a high-profile website and one that everyone seems to have an opinion about.
• useit.com's focus on web-design and usability makes it even more appropriate.
• It is reasonably small-scale and quite focused.
• Bashing Jakob Nielsen has become fashionable lately and this contest gives his critics chance to prove a point.
• It's about time, innit?

Jakob Nielsen is undeniably the worlds most influential web-design critic and usability advocate. He runs useit.com, the world's highest profile usability website, with almost 5 million page views last year (1999).

Lately it's become fasionable to strongly oppose Nielsen's views (and his person) in public. Everyone likes to criticize him. His opinions. His style. His website!

Nielsen holds a self-obtained status of a web-usability father figure. His messages have been spread far and wide by popular media and his ferociously loyal group of fans. He's now reached the point where he has become (an admittedly somewhat bizarre) pop-culture icon, and as such he virtually dominates the world of usability-guruness.

Some people are sensitive to this kind of popular-media sensationalism. They seem to fear that the world may be getting a bit one-sided view of what web-site usability is and how it works. Or maybe they're just jealous.

Either way, right now seems to be the perfect time to propose an open contest for the best redesign proposals for useit.com, the website we all know and love (or love to hate).