Lessons learned from the book “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug

Not long ago, I had a perception that to build a great product one needs to get at least these two elements spot on: a) Understanding the users/customers unmet needs and b) Ability to quantitatively analyse user behaviour to quickly iterate and get closer to Product/Market fit. ‘User Experience’, somehow always took a backstage for me, partly because of my struggle to distinguish between a ‘good UX’ and a ‘great UX’. So I decided to lean on the highly recommended book on User Experience for Product Managers: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. Following is the summary of lessons learned about User Experience and how it is critical to the success of any product that we intend to build.

What is exactly ‘User Experience’ ?

In simple terms, it is an emotion, a feeling, an intuition or a connection that an user makes while using the product. The whole motive behind user experience is to make users feel good about the product, making it easier to achieve what they want to do and thus ultimately make the entire process beneficial to your business.

1. First law of usability

Steve Krug points out that his first law of usability is: “Don’t make users think”. The design of a web page or anything that you design should be self-evident and obvious. The users should be able to “get it” instantly after looking at the screen. More the users spend time in thinking about what all components/elements are about, the more hurdles we introduce in their process of exploring (or experiencing) the product and costs users their precious time.

So make the screens/pages in such a way that a user who does not even has a remote idea about the product/screen, should be able to “get it” what all things he can do, just with a glance

2. Design for scanning, not reading

Especially when it comes to web pages, users are most likely to only scan the web page. They do this because they are either in a hurry or just want to muddle their way through to reach the desired outcome. Hence, it is necessary that web pages are designed in such a way that they are easy to scan. Author suggests to follow below principles when designing for scanning:

• Use universally accepted conventions: Similar to the ‘STOP’ sign on highways that are universally same and understood in an instant, we should continue to use universally accepted elements on the web page. These may include search icon, position of the site title, social networking sharing options, etc. Do not try to reinvent the wheel on things that are accepted as conventions.
• Create visual hierarchies: This allows user to easily figure out what things are important and hence need attention from the user and what can be skipped.
• Make obvious what’s clickable: Since most of the times users will click on a web page or tap on mobile app, make it crystal clear to user about what elements are clickable and what are not

3. Make clicks mindless

Clicking or Tapping is one of the most widely used action on any application and hence it makes sense that the clicks are made mindless in such a way that they do not require any thought. The number of clicks do not matter as long as they are mindless and unambiguous. For clicks to be mindless, we need to design it in such a way that it is unambiguous where the action will lead the user. Author calls this as ‘Scent of Information’: which tells the user where a particular action will lead them, ultimately reaching their destination. As a thumb rule consider 3 mindless clicks equal to 1 click requiring thought.

4. Less is more

As we saw earlier, users scan and do not read the entire content. It is necessary to remove any filler words or sentences. They distract users from searching what they are looking for.

Avoid instructions on the web page. Everything should be self-explanatory. If at all, there are certain things that need explanation then keep it short and simple.

5. Help users to easily navigate

Web navigation is very similar to navigating through a shopping mall when you are trying to find something. You either decide to ask someone directly about what you are looking for (in web: search) or you scan the shelfs and look for it yourself (in web: navigation). If you decide to scan the shelfs, you generally make your way through a hierarchy (in web: categories and sub-categories). Eventually, if you do not find what you are looking for you exit the mall (in web: you close the website).

Hence, it is necessary to implement the navigation in a right way since they allow users to locate their positioning within the website and unlike in a mall, users do not have any sense of scale, direction and location when browsing a web page. Following are certain things that must be present always:

• Persistent Navigation: Consists of Site ID, sections, utilities and search
• Home Button: It should always be visible & accessible. It gives a sense of assurance in case user is lost during a browsing session
• Page Names: Every page should have a name, it should be prominent and the link on which the user clicks to reach the page should share the same name as that of the page
• ‘You are here’ navigation: Since users have no idea about scale and direction, it is important to indicate where the users are within the scale of things. Breadcrumbs are also good indicators of showing users where they are within the website.

6. Don’t argue but test

By now most of the companies have adopted Agile and Lean methodologies to product development. This means everyone is working within a cross-functional teams with different competencies. On one hand it brings different perspectives towards a problem but on the other hand, if not managed well, it is also a hotbed for conflicts. Conflicts arise because everyone brings to the table their own view of how things should work or look like, primarily biased from their own experiences and as with most conflicts: none of the arguments are right or wrong, they are perfectly placed in the grey zone and makes it difficult to come to any rational conclusion.

Hence what do you do ? Test it. Testing with real users opens up a whole new dimension to the discussion and also helps everyone involved to re-learn about their assumptions. Testing is a mighty tool can break even the biggest of the deadlocks.

7. Usability Testing — Do it regularly

As a member of the product team, you are already way too invested into your solution and hence cannot see any flaws in the design. Usability tests with different people gives a completely different perspective

• Frequency: Do it once every month. Continuous testing aids in continuous improvement of your product
• Number of users: Three users per month is a good number. The aim is to identify the most critical issues with the design and hence would be common across any number of users.
• Testing: Have one facilitator and the user. If possible record the testing sessions so that you can refer it later and also share with any stakeholders or team members for their enlightenment
• Focus: There will always be large number of problems than you can solve. Hence it is important to be ruthless in prioritising only the critical issues

8. Increase your Reservoir of Goodwill

‘Reservoir of Goodwill’ is a feeling that the user comes along with him/her when they visit and view the product for the first time. Depending on their experience with the product, this reservoir either gets depleted or gets increased. Good UX will always augment the reservoir of goodwill while bad UX will deplete it. Things that can increase your reservoir of goodwill:

• Make the most important things that your user would want to do on your site as easy as possible
• Be upfront about the information that users would want to view
• Save steps where ever you can
• It good to apologise to the user when you are not able to do what the user expects i.e.404 page or some limiting functionality that you know user would want but for some reason you cannot provide it

Conclusion

These are the basic principles that can be used in designing the user experience for both web and mobile and would hardly change with time. The book is a great read for those dabbling with UX issues, are new to User Centered Design and also light-weight (200 pages).

Disclaimer: This article is in no way to promote the book. I write book summaries as a way to grasp the key points of the books that I read and think that it could be beneficial for others who are limited in time.

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