Jakob Nielsen

Useit.com

Jakob Nielsen

Nielsen's views on Web design have made the Internet both useful and easy to use. Nielsen, 52, got his PhD in human-computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen. He worked at his alma mater before moving to the U.S. to work at what was then Bellcore (Bell Communications Research) and the User Interface Institute at IBM (IBM). In 1994 he joined Sun Microsystems (JAVA) as a "distinguished engineer," and it was there that he immersed himself in the then-emerging field of Web usability. In the ensuing years he has made a name as an unflinching proponent of user-friendly Web design and is now working to apply his thinking to mobile interfaces.