Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
Amazon.com Review
The title of the book is its chief personal design premise. All of the tips, techniques, and examples presented revolve around users being able to surf merrily through a well-designed site with minimal cognitive strain. Readers will quickly come to agree with many of the book’s assumptions, such as “We don’t read pages–we scan them” and “We don’t figure out how things work–we muddle through.” Coming to grips with such hard facts sets the stage for Web design that then produces topnotch sites.
Using an attractive mix of full-color screen shots, cute cartoons and diagrams, and informative sidebars, the book keeps your attention and drives home some crucial points. Much of the content is devoted to proper use of conventions and content layout, and the “before and after” examples are superb. Topics such as the wise use of rollovers and usability testing are covered using a consistently practical approach.
This is the type of book you can blow through in a couple of evenings. But despite its conciseness, it will give you an expert’s ability to judge Web design. You’ll never form a first impression of a site in the same way again. –Stephen W. Plain
Topics covered:
- User patterns
- Designing for scanning
- Wise use of copy
- Navigation design
- Home page layout
- Usability testing
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Three New Chapters!
- Usability as common courtesy — Why people really leave Web sites
- Web Accessibility, CSS, and you — Making sites usable and accessible
- Help! My boss wants me to ______. — Surviving executive design whims
“I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book. Don’t Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site. After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.
In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing. If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book.” — Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards
Buy Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition at Amazon
Buy Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition at Amazon
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The “show me” what you mean book of web usability review. I particularly like the common sense handling of the main web problems.
Some of the key things that are pointed out in this book are:
1. Don’t make me think: Basically the web user does not want to venture into a site that requires them to figure it out. It should be self-evident. How do we use web pages:
a. We don’t read pages, we scan them
b. We don’t make optimal choices, we satisfice
c. We don’t figure out, how things work, we muddle through
2. It doesn’t matter how many times I click as long as each click is a mindless unambiguous choice
3. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.
The first 5 chapters clearly illustrate the three “Krug’s Laws of Usability” listed above with lots of pictures and examples. Well done.
His chapters on navigation and finding your way around are a cookbook on how to do it right. He finishes the chapters with several examples, first asking the reader to look at the examples and then discusses how he feels it should be redone. Excellent teaching tool. Similarly, he broaches the topic of the Home page and how it should be structured and the various forces pulling in different directions. The examples he gives at the end here too are a good teaching tool.
The remainder of the book discusses the design processes and the usability tests. These are excellent chapters in the forces at work and it is evident, he has done this many times from the information he has gathered.
He provides specific suggestions for web usability testing for various stages of sites as well as for various problems. This is wonderful guidance if you are new at this. He also provides a guideline on scripting and report writing. Nice job.
He winds up the book with recommended reading and also providing a website for readers of this book: http://www.circle.com/krugbook/
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. Most folks can’t afford a full-blown usability consult, but they can afford to buy a $35 book. 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. From WebReference.com.