Nielsen Norman Group

In short

Nielsen Norman Group was founded in 1998 by Jakob Nielsen, author of the Ten Usability Heuristics, and Don Norman, who coined the term 'user experience'. Both have since retired from running it, and Kara Pernice leads the firm as CEO. What it produces is research, training and advice rather than design: free articles, paid reports, more than 35 courses with a UX Certification, and consulting. It is #1 on our UX research ranking.

Consulting covers user testing, expert reviews, UX maturity assessments, custom research and applied workshops in which its staff teach a method on a team's live problem. The firm says it has tested over 2,000 interfaces and observed more than 4,000 users in person across 18 countries. Google, eBay, PayPal, Visa, American Express, Morgan Stanley, The New York Times, BBC and Mozilla are among its clients, and its site puts custom engagements at $40K to $200K.

Large organisations trying to raise their UX maturity, benchmark a product's usability or train in-house designers and researchers to one shared standard are the natural buyers, and banks and public bodies get findings they can cite internally. NN/g will tell you what is wrong and why; it will not staff the team that redesigns the screens, so a company needing designs delivered should hire a studio and bring NN/g in to check the result.