Jakob Nielsen was born 5 October 1957 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds a Ph.D. in 1988 in human–computer interaction from the Technical University of Denmark.
Nielsen's earlier affiliations include Bellcore (now known as

Sun Microsystems
From 1994 to 1998, he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. He was hired to make heavy-duty enterprise software easier to use, since large-scale applications had been the focus of most of his projects at the

In 2010, Nielsen was listed by Bloomberg Businessweek among 28 "World's Most Influential Designers".
In recognition of Nielsen's

Books
Nielsen's published books include:
• Nielsen, Jakob (1990). Hypertext and Hypermedia. San Diego, California: Academic Press Professional, Inc. ISBN 978-0-12-518410-6.
• Nielsen, Jakob (1993).

Nielsen founded the usability engineering movement for efficient and affordable improvements of user interfaces and he has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds more than a thousand United States patents, mainly on ways of

As Nielsen's newsletter and website grew, and with his use of "acronomic platitudes" to describe his concepts, it has been thought by some that much of Nielsen's work was more about marketing himself than rooted in research.
Nielsen's usability

• Usability
• Web design