Perceived affordance and the problem of over-linking

I know that Nielsen has many critics, and I can kind of see why people seem to talk down about him. Some issues he writes about and tests are pretty much common sense. I find myself torn between mild frustration of this common sense, and the recognition of some issues that I actually agree with. Sometimes as a user, you don't really think in terms of this much detail and the actual facts about usability, so usually I can find a few interesting points that totally make sense beyond my user sensibility.

Perceived affordance was one of the more interesting things I read in this week. I can't stand when I get to a site and have no idea where to click. I drag the mouse around and do a little bit of what the authors called "minesweeping", and if I can't find anything, I am not happy. I'd say not knowing where to click is my own, personal number 1 reason of why I leave a site. I've also ran into sites exactly like the example in the book where the text is mostly blue, yet none of it is links. I honestly can't take it at all. I'd rather have 5 huge pop-ups in my face with blaring sound than a site with blue text throughout. It's quite painful.

Nielsen also mentioned the USPS website. Last time I checked out the Post Office's website, I had to put in a request for a change of address. What should've taken me about 3 minutes took me 20. I couldn't find the form, first of all. And there were about 3 duplicated links per single link and it was really messy and unorganized. Again, I had no idea where to click and how to find what I needed. I must say, that site can definitely use some simplification.

The two chapters really drove home the fact that designers need to design based on the users' expectations and convenience and not their own.