Usability pioneer Jakob Nielsen celebrated his 25th year in the field and he is pretty pleased with his career choice.

I recall doing my master’s thesis on web usability and one thing I found inescapable was that as a researcher, you HAD to come across Nielsen’s work. By my estimates, 60% of the literature I sifted through during my scholarly research on web usability cited Jakob Nielsen’s works in the early 1990′s. I would say Nielsen’s research from 1992-1995 laid the foundation for most of the usability tenets analysts and designers adhere to.

So my hats off to Mr. Nielsen. 25 years in any field means dedication and commitment, but 25 years in usability means there’s a lot of stupid design and usability problems in the world.