usability
Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Krug
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | usability | 2 Comments
I’ve recently finished reading Steve Krug’s web usability book titled “Don’t make me think” and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought I would share some of the points the author made that resonated with me most:
Common sense – much of web usability is just common sense. “Like a lot of common sense, though, it’s not necessarily obvious until after someone has pointed it out to you”. In a nutshell, web usability should be focused on ensuring that a person of average ability and experience should be able to use your site with minimal frustration.
Don’t make me think – this is Steve’s first rule of usability and is the overriding principle when deciding whether or not something works or doesn’t in a web design. When a user looks at your page, it should be self-evident, obvious, self-explanatory. They should be able understand it without expending much effort thinking about it.
Web users don’t read pages, they scan them – it is a well-documented fact that most web users tend to spend little time ‘reading’ web pages. Instead, they scan them browsing for words, phrases or icons that draw their attention.
Users don’t make optimal choices. They take the first reasonable option – It’s best not to assume users will scan the page, consider all of the available options and choose the best one. In reality, users don’t choose the best option, they choose the first reasonable option. The reasons for this ? Web users are usually in a hurry, there’s not much penalty for guessing wrong and weighing the options may not improve our chances.