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Is hype about Web 2.0 making web designers neglect the basics of effective web design? Jakob Nielson thinks so.

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He warned that the focus on making websites more dynamic and interactive could mean usability is been neglected. The danger is that sites stuffed to the brim with personalisation tools could appear “glossy but useless”

Nielsen described Web 2.0 as the “latest fashion” at the expense of good design and usability established over the last decade.

Good web usability means making sites easy to use, good search tools, the avoidance of copy jargon and making usability testing and good intuitive design the priority.

Nielsen research shows patterns of user involvement with sites question the sense of adopting Web 2.0 technologies.

Users of a site split into three groups. One that regularly contributes (about 1%); a second that occasionally contributes (about 9%); and a majority who almost never contribute (90%).

This suggests that a small number of users are likely to make significant use of all the tools a site provides and web 2.0 could see web design companies pursuing this minority group, while ignoring the vast majority who come to a site with a specific purpose.

Nielsen questions whether sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, who have large involved communities of users will not hold true for all sites.

"Most people just want to get in, get it and get out," he said. "For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool."

Nielsen questioned the logic of championing teenage use of the web as a harbinger of what people will continue to do when they were older.

"It's because they are 20 years old that they act differently to 40-year-olds," he said.

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