A recent Boxes and Arrows article illuminates some shortcomings of Nielsen/Norman Group methodologies found in their report Usability Return on Investment. It’s about time someone shed a critical light on their activities. While they preach user-centeredness, they have a very NN/g-centered view of usability. Both principles in the firm, Jakob Nielsen and Donald Norman, excel in overstating the obvious, especially in book form where they have plenty of room to repeat their assertions until the reader is numbed into submission. I read Nielsen’s column with the same skepticism I apply to any other columnist—he’s far too opinionated and commanding to be taken too seriously. (I also noticed a wee shift in Nielsen’s once-scathing opinion of Flash after Macromedia paid him large sums of money for his consulting work, an embarassment for both parties, in my opinion). Beyond that, their methods for drawing broad conclusions are dubious and often lazy, as seen in this intelligent review.