Insight
Jakob Nielsen Ranked 100 UX Methods: Cheap Wins, Theater Loses
Jakob Nielsen gave 100 UX design methods one score each, and cost counts twice in that score. Two things stand out: AI is making many methods much cheaper, and some popular methods are often theater, done to look good rather than to decide anything.
The formula
Each method gets one score: breadth plus altitude plus persuasion, minus two times the cost. Cost counts twice because budgets are real, and three benefit scores would easily beat one cost score.
Cost drops
Cheap methods that define the problem beat expensive methods that polish a design. As AI makes methods cheaper, the ones that used to cost too much move up the ranking, even though the methods themselves didn't change.
Decision yield
Nielsen's test for theater is simple: after the persona or the journey map, did the team build anything differently? If nothing changed, the method gave nothing back, no matter how good it looks.
I read Jakob Nielsen's new ranking of 100 UX design methods. He gives each method one score: breadth, plus altitude, plus persuasion, minus two times the cost. Altitude means how big the decision is, from small UI details up to strategy.
Cheap methods win. Most of the top ten take less than two hours: sketching, problem statements, jobs-to-be-done, a one-page design brief. Design system work gets minus three, because it pays off in future projects, not in the current one.
AI is also pushing cost down fast. AI prototyping is number one. For 2031, he expects methods that used to be too expensive to move up a lot: vision concepts from 44th to 3rd, journey mapping from 30th to 6th, UI inventory from 89th to 25th.
The second topic is theater: methods teams do to look good, not to make a decision. He names personas, empathy maps, journey maps, vision concepts and design principles as high risk. His test is decision yield. After the method, did the team build anything differently?
Last month he ranked 50 user research methods the same way. That article covers the research side.
After 100 methods, his advice is short: try one new method every month.