Don’t Make me Think, Revisited
Steve Krug’s book is exactly what it says on the tin: a common sense approach to web (and mobile usability). Not too far into the book he defines what he means by this concept of “usability.”
Something is usable if a person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it is worth.
This concept is central to the entirety of the book. Krug argues that people will leave a site if they get too frustrated with it or are convinced they won’t find what they’re looking for there. The biggest — and often least accounted for — obstacle to this is the site’s usability.
The first section of the book is all about general rules that can apply to an entire site. Rule number 1 is “Don’t make me think!” The more you make people think, the more stressed they become about what they have to do to use the site and the more likely they are to leave and never come back. Users like mindless choices so help them out. One way that designers can and should do this is by omitting needless words, in order to decrease noise on the page. Krug points out that how people really use the web is different from how designers image people use the web. Designers think of sites like a product brochure when it’s really more like a billboard. One the audience pours over, the other they scan. He then says, if the audience is going to treat our sites as billboards, we might as well design great billboards.
The next section is about the navigation and the homepage. Since web pages have no physical space to guide people, online navigation had better be good to help those coming into the site. Through talking about Home Pages, Krug explains the trend to boy down sites with too much stuff and says that designers need to learn to figure out what to cut from a site.
Krug then goes on to outline how to make sure the site works, how to figure out ways to improve websites and how to do so cheaply. This section is all about usability testing, a topic he covers here but goes into more depth with in his book, Rocket Surgery made Easy.
The final part of the book talks about larger concerns and outside concerns. This includes mobile concerns, the importance of adding accessibility. Mobile considerations include the reminder that mobile devices don’t have cursors (fairly obvious but often forgotten about) and that apps should be three things: (1) delightful, (2) learnable and (3) memorable (as in you remember how to use them later).
Krug clearly follows his own advice by trimming down to only what’s necessary and it’s very easy to read, having been written in a clear voice and includes great examples to illustrate his points. What’s great about this book is that it’s less than a year old (copyright 2014) so there’s not much more up to date one can get on this topic. I would definitely suggest this book to any designer, as it’s very easy to understand and includes a lot of recommendations for further readings on other topics.
