Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (Voices That Matter)

By Steve Krug

• As a web designer that owns my own domain, I had purchased Jakob Nielsens Wed Design Usability book and loved it. I thought nothing could top it, but then I was in a book store and picked Don't Make Me Think up. It had some high-power reviews of the book on that back cover. When I opened this book up, I understood why. This book talks about Web Design as and ways to understand why a site needs to be design to the specific user the designer has in mind.

• A practical Web design usability guide, "Don't Make Me Think!" is based on empirical observation not exhaustive statistics. Steve Krug's five years of usability consulting and testing are distilled down to this thin yet gem-filled how-to. Krug observed how people actually use the Web rather than how we *think* they use it, gleaning key usability guidelines. This book shows you how to conduct your own usability tests on the cheap. What follows is a summary of the book's major rules and observations:

  1. Don't Make Me Think!

  The number one usability rule, most often expresed by users. Web pages should be self-evident, obvious, and self-explanatory. Buttons should have short text and look clickable. The default search for your site should be simple.

  2. Design for scanning not reading

  By observing users Krug found that people glance, scan some text, and click on the first reasonable option (called "satisficing"). People scan Web pages, they don't read them. We don't make optimal choices, we satisfice.

  Here are some things you can do to make sure users understand as much of your site as possible:

  a. Create a clear visual hierarchy to show relative importance of content (H1/H2 etc.)
  b. Take advantage of conventions
  c. Break pages up into clearly defined areas
  d. Make it obvious what's clickable
  e. Minimize noise

  3. Users like mindless choices

  Make each click an unambiguous orthogonal alternative.

  4. Omit needless words

  Get rid of half of the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left. This is especially important on home pages and
  gateway pages.

  5. Navigation: Use street signs and breadcrumbs

  Factoid: The back button accounts for 30 to 40 percent of all Web clicks. Persistent navigation appears on every page of the site and should include the following five elements:

  a. Site ID
  b. A way home
  c. Search
  d. Sections
  e. Utilities

  Your navigation should answer these questions:

  a. What site is this?
  b. What page am I on?
  c. What are the major sections of this site?
  d. What are my options at this level?
  e. Where am my in the scheme of things?
  f. How can I search?

  6. Your home page should convey the big picture

  What is the site about? Use a good short tag line and welcome blurb. Rotate site promotions. Remove everything nonessential.

  7. Most Web design usability arguments are waste of time

  These "religious debates" consist of people expressing strongly held personal beliefs about things that can't be proven. All Web users are unique. There are no average users. There are no simple "right" answers for most Web design questions. What works is good integrated design that fills a need, that's carefully thought out, well executed, and tested.

  The antidote for religious debate is to ask specific questions and test with real users. The last three chapters of the book show how to perform testing on the cheap with three or four users. I really enjoyed this book, especially Krug's easy humor.