It seems just like yesterday when “design usability” was all the rage. I recall it was right around the time of the dot-com crash, with ecommerce sites folding like a bad poker hand, that “usability” became royalty. Companies that were eagerly rolling out the red carpet during those tough times were often the same ones that wouldn’t acknowledge usability during the good times.
With a proven reputation in retail circles, the principles of web usability ultimately pervaded the corporate world – where guru Jakob Nielsen became a household name. The web world was getting it. Design and usability were very important.