News Archive

Web guru fights info pollution

E-mail, the net, weblogs, instant messaging, text messaging, multi-media messaging... the list of ways to communicate electronically in the 21st Century is growing.
Frustrated woman on a computer
People need to prioritise and be more disciplined
To some, all these tools which are only a couple of clicks and screen flicks away have transformed the way they work and run their lives.
To web guru Jakob Nielsen, it is computers which are starting to control us, and it is time to "rule the computer and put it back in its place".

Known as the king of usability, Dr Nielsen has published and consulted extensively on how best to maximise the net and websites around what people want.
But he has recently turned his critical eye to what he says is a drastically worsening situation in electronic communication, something he has dubbed as "information pollution".
Daily pollutants
When the World Wide Web created a navigable web in the 1990s, e-mail and the net became a key way to communicate quickly and without much effort.

But even then there was much worried mooting about information overload.

How can we deal with too much information? Send us your ideas "Information pollution is information overload taken to the extreme," Jakob Nielsen told BBC News Online while in London for the Nielson Norman Group User Experience Conference.
"It's where it stops being a burden and becomes an impediment to your ability to get your work done.

DR NIELSEN'S TOP TIPS

• Time manage and prioritise
• Create more than one e-mail account
• Shunt other e-mails to places you will look at later
• Think hard who you send an e-mail to
• Don't reply to all, just those who have to know
• Get a decent spam filter, Don't be event driven: resist e-mail alerts

Full Story courtesy of the BBC; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3171376.stm