Nielsen Norman Group
The people who named 'user experience' and counted how you actually read this page.
- Founded
- 1998, by Jakob Nielsen & Don Norman
- Coined
- 'User experience' (Norman, at Apple)
- Famous for
- 10 usability heuristics, F-pattern
- Output
- Free research articles, training, certification
Forms & parts of speech
What it is
Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) is the UX research and consulting firm founded in 1998 by Jakob Nielsen — whose 10 usability heuristics (1994) remain the field's standard checklist — and Don Norman, who coined the very term 'user experience' at Apple and wrote The Design of Everyday Things. Its decades of eyetracking and usability research (the F-pattern reading studies, mobile UX, intranet design) publish as free weekly articles, training, and the field's best-known certification.
Why marketers rely on it
It is the discipline's reference library: when designers argue, NN/g citations end the argument the way Search Central ends SEO ones. For marketers specifically, its research on how people actually read (they don't — they scan in an F-pattern), form design, and credibility perception converts directly into landing-page and content decisions.
How to use it well
Use the free article archive as the evidence layer for design reviews (search by component — forms, navigation, carousels), run heuristic evaluations before expensive testing, and put one team member through the training when UX maturity becomes the bottleneck. Date-check older studies — patterns hold remarkably, but interfaces evolve.
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonyms
Origin & history
Jakob Nielsen (ex-Sun Microsystems, the web-usability movement's loudest voice) and Don Norman (ex-Apple, where his 'User Experience Architect' title coined the field's name) founded NN/g in 1998 — pairing Nielsen's testing empiricism with Norman's cognitive-design theory.
Etymology: source.
Usage trends
Search interest for this term over the last five years:
Common questions
- What is Nielsen Norman Group?
- The UX research consultancy founded in 1998 by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman — the field's reference research source.
- What are the 10 usability heuristics?
- Nielsen's 1994 principles for interface evaluation — visibility of status, match to the real world, user control, consistency, error prevention and more.
- What is the F-pattern?
- NN/g's eyetracking finding that users scan pages in an F shape — two horizontal sweeps, then a vertical skim down the left.
Related tools & calculators
Resources & people to follow
- referenceNNgroup.com — the article archive
- bookThe Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
- referenceBaymard Institute — the e-commerce complement
Curated, non-competitor resources verified per term.
Related training
- moduleCRO & experimentation
Disciplines
Areas of marketing where nielsen norman group is a core concern: