 "Don't Make Me Think: A quick, entertaining, and worthwhile read for Web designers" | 2009-10-20 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3BJVR686Y5X2G |
Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" focuses on the steps necessary to ensure that your Web site is user-friendly. Steve Krug firmly believes that if something is too hard to use, people just won't use it. The number one priority that Steve believes people should focus on to ensure that their Web site is easy to use is simply "Don't make me think!" This means that as far as humanly possible when a user looks at a Web page it should be self-evident, obvious, and self-explanatory.
Throughout his book, Steve focuses on the importance of understanding Web users and their needs. Krug's "Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" is broken up into these 12 topics:
1. Krug's First Law of Usability
2. Scanning, satisficing, and muddling through
3. Designing pages for scanning, not reading
4. Why users like mindless choices
5. The art of not writing for the Web
6. Designing navigation
7. Designing the Home page
8. Why most Web design teams arguments about usability are a waste of time, and how to avoid them
9. Why user testing--done simply enough--is the cure for all your sites ills
10. Usability as a common courtesy
11. Accessibility, cascading style sheets
12. What to do when your boss wants you to do something you consider a bad decision.
Understanding Web users, their needs, and the basics of what makes them think will help with the design of any Web site. The most often things that make users think according to Krug are cute or clever names, marketing induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names. He also describes links and buttons that aren't obviously clickable as "another needless source of question marks over people heads." Understanding the basic principle of what causes confusion for people and how to eliminate that confusion is the most important thing you can do to stop users from having to "think". The main reason it is so important not to make users think is because "most people are going to spend far less time looking at the pages we design than we'd like to think." Therefore, Websites need to be as self-explanatory as possible so they can be effective even at a glace.
Krug spends a lot of time explaining how the design layout of the Web site should look to ensure easy usability, the importance of the search bar/box, as well as how the text content should be written in order to be most effective. This book provided a lot of visual examples which helped readers to better understand what the details of the site should look like. Without the visuals, I would have been completely lost. A large portion of the book was also dedicated to Web navigation and designing the Home page. This is simply because the Home page is the first page users see and if people can't find their way around your Web site then they won't use it. I found these chapters to be particularly useful.
For those people who are working either alone or on a Web design team to design a Web site for a company or organization, this book offers great information on how to perform usability testing, particularly how to perform usability testing on a budget. It also touches on how to make your team the most productive they can be.
"Don't Make Me Think!" is the second edition to Steve Krug's first book that was published five years ago. Steve was reluctant to write a second edition, he worried that if he added more material the book would no longer "practice what it preaches". The book itself is a good example of what Web usability means, it's easy to understand and very straight forward. It was designed to be a short two hour "airplane" read which made it all the more appealing. As someone who hasn't read the first edition of the book, however, I don't know to what extent they differ but I feel that the additional chapters of the second edition (Usability as a common courtesy, Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and you, and Help! My boss wants me to ______.) were unnecessary and a little off topic. I really enjoyed reading the entire book until chapter 10, the information provided after that was not useful for me personally and but perhaps others will find it valuable and enjoy it.
Overall, I would rate the book four out of five stars. I found it to be very interesting and an enjoyable read. The fact that it is so short, simple, and to the point made me feel as though Steve Krug was indeed "practicing what he preached." He talked a lot about making the Web users feel like you do understand and respect that their time is precious and that's how I felt when reading this book. I also found myself laughing out loud a few times which always helps to make a book more pleasing. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is designing a Web site. The little time that it will take you to read this book is nothing compared to the money that you will save by creating a functional and user-friendly Web site.
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 "Incredibly useful, sensible advice!" | 2009-10-14 |
| - Reviewed By User: AQU3S3CNWJEBU |
| Great book if you are required to write any content for the web. Good for web admin, web developers, content writers - anyone doing anything on the web really! Highly recommend. |
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| "Highly recommend for novice and expert web masters alike" | 2009-10-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2PGWHM3V2LHP0 |
Mr. Krug has managed to simply the steps needed to create web sites that are easy to use. We have been on a long term project to improve our web site and now can avoid many of the usability problems outlined in his book.
Thanks Mr. Krug |
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| "A good book" | 2009-10-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1G1C7MVH0UX2Z |
| A little short, I know that was the objective of the author, keeping it so short that it can be read on a plane. Right, it should be cheaper then... anyway, even though it's a book from 2005, the usability analysis is valid even 4 years later: the usability principles and guidelines described in the book are often not followed by designers, despite the evolution of the web. |
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| "A LISTING OF ALL KRUG'S ISSUES" | 2009-10-08 |
| - Reviewed By ghost1030 |
The overriding theme to the book is that anything on your web page that takes more than a fraction of a second of thought is bad. When I worked at the Internal Revenue Service, we were never allowed to post anything that took less than a day of thought.
Sure - the topics in this book are obvious. There's nothing here you couldn't have figured out yourself if you took the time to do so. But that's the point - Krug took the time to assemble these obvious but numerous issues for you, so you don't have to think through all of the potential problems your web site is likely to have. IRONICALLY, THE REAL VALUE OF THIS BOOK IS NOT IN ANY BRILLIANT INSIGHTS. THE VALUE IS THAT YOU ARE FORCED TO STOP AND THINK ABOUT YOUR OWN WEB SITE AS YOU READ. That is, simply by taking the time to drift through this light read, you can't help but to ponder how your own web site suffers from each of Krug's common web page problems. You'll undoubtedly end up making a number of improvements to your own site. Krug's small suggested improvements taken collectively really do end up making a big difference to your site. I made at least ten changes to the web site that hawks my own cheesy book (Web Service and SOA Technologies) based on Krug's very good advice.
Weakness #1 - The book's pace slows down at the end. I can't help to wonder if Krug was a little concerned that he wasn't going to have enough pages. Do we really need an entire page that tells us that some people are naturally less patient than others? But even at his slower pace, there are still many sentences that make you think (errr....even if you're not supposed to).
Weakness #2 - Why didn't Krug design a checklist of issues as the last page? You can't use his table of contents as that checklist since his style is to use titles that don't mean anything without reading each chapter. He needs a summary page like this:
* Is it obvious where you can click and where you cannot? Are there "hotspots" on images that are not obvious?
* If a user were to squint and look at your web page, could they discern what each area on the page was most likely about?
* Does your search capability have confusing pulldowns?
* If a user arrives at any random page on your web site (say, from a search engine), can they figure out what site they are on, what the page name is, what are the major sections of the site, what are the best options on the page, where they are relative to the other pages, and how they can search?
* Do your user's eyes have to leap all over the page in order to figure it out?
* Does any operation ever take more than a few seconds to figure out?
* Does the reader ever have to read through instructions to figure something out? (They won't.)
* Is information organized in a clear, visual hierarchy?
* Do you violate any web page conventions?
* Does your site have excessive images and flashy items on it?
* Are your pages reasonably short? (that is, not too much scrolling required)
* Does the page have any text on it that isn't absolutely necessary? (like this parenthetical note, for example)
* Navigation on your site has to be crystal clear. If the user is "looking for a chainsaw", do they know if they should look in the "tools" section or in "lawn and garden"?
* If the user makes a bad guess when navigating your site, is it easy to recover from the error?
* Do any of your pages look so different from the others that the user might be confused if they've accidentally hyperlinked off your web site?
* When you analyze your site, have you spent the majority of your time thinking only about the higher level pages (rather than the low down, leaf node pages)?
* Does every page have a unique identifying name?
* Is every page name prominent?
* Does the page name ever not match the hyperlink that was used to arrive at that page?
* Have you favored the use of navigation tabs? (Krug is a big proponent of tabs.)
* Does your home page establish the site mission, hierarchy, and search method? Do users immediately know why they should be on your site and not someone else's?
* What items appear "above the fold" on each page? (that is, without having to scroll down)
* Does the site have any current references so users know they are not looking at an old, dead site?
* Does the company have a good, descriptive tag line?
* Is it clear where the user can search, browse, and find the best your company has to offer?
* Are you aware that display space devoted to promoting one item implicitly detracts from other items on the page?
* Have you ever observed a completely new user (with no introduction whatsoever) land on your site?
* Have you made the mistake of doing no user testing at all because comprehensive testing is too expensive?
* Did you perform usability testing very early in web development, like you should?
* Did you make the mistake of giving help to your new test user during your usability test?
* Does your site blatantly omit obvious information about your company because of embarrassment? Does it conceal information like contact phone numbers?
* How quick and easy does your site service its most common request?
* How kind is your site to the vision impaired? What happens if you change the browser font setting to "largest"? Anything?
* Does every image have "alt text"?
You may think you don't need to read the book now, but remember the real value of the book is to force you to stop and think a while about each issue. You can't do that blowing through this list in 10 seconds, especially without the examples in the book.
Overall - Despite some minor weaknesses, the book is great and offers enormous value. Don't Make Me Think has been one of the best sellers in software books since August 2005 and for good reason. Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" really does warrant some thought. If you have a web site, there's no question that you should buy this book.
Glenn Hostetler
Author, Web Service and SOA Technologies |
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| "Good Advice!" | 2009-10-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1VG3AEWFBR23K |
After seeing the title I just had to read this book. I use this philosophy for just about everything - the easy, repetitive stuff should be so easy you do not have to think about it while freeing up our brain power for life's challenges and the fun stuff. So it goes with good design and usability. That is the essence of this book, basic web design practices which will provide the user with a pleasant experience when visiting your website.
Here are what I consider the highlights of this book:
1. Usability - The author preaches good usability and this shines through in this book. The book is easy to read, has nice diagrams, and simple explanations and examples.
2. Short - This book is short and to the point while providing a good overview of usability. The goal of the author was to write the book so a potential reader could finish within a long plane flight. After reading this book I consider myself much better versed in usability than prior to with minimal investment of time.
3. Examples - There are some pretty solid examples here. One particularly memorable example was in the form of screen captures of what the Web designer designs and what the Web user sees. Point taken.
4. Recommended Reading - The author provides some good recommendations in the form of books and websites. A good explanation is provided as to why each item is recommended.
Here are what I consider the drawbacks of this book:
1. Design Recommendations: This is a very subjective (and therefore heated) topic for many. Although there is some solid advice on basic design to ease the user experience I found some of the recommendations (and examples) to be a bit utilitarian for my liking. Fun design and ease of use is a tricky balancing act - so this is not necessarily a hit against the book but rather a note of difference in style. This is not a flashy design book, but more functional in nature.
2. Humor: This is another subjective area. Although I prefer humorous treatment of otherwise potentially boring topics (Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors in the field of Marketing) I found the humor to be a bit dated and did not really appeal to me. This should not stop someone from purchasing the book, but worth noting nonetheless.
Overall I found this book to be a good overview of the subject of website usability by a credible source. Given the short amount of time it will take to read the book, I believe it is worthwhile for those who create websites, are involved in the marketing function in a company who has a website, or an individual who is interested in learning about usability. |
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