Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Krug
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | usability
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.
Create a clear visual hierarchy – it is of paramount importance to make sure the visual cues clearly and accurately depict the relationship between the items on the page. The more important something is, the more prominent it should be. Things that are related logically should also be related visually. Things should be nested visually to show what’s part of what (eg a subcategory).
Conventions are your friends – the feeling of familiarity that user’s have when they are presented with a web convention is very reassuring. Well-applied conventions make it simpler for users to jump from site to site without wasting effort figuring out how things work.
Make it obvious what’s clickable – this is closely related to creating a clear visual hierarchy and will save the user many wasted mouse clicks.
Omit needless words – “a sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts”. Don’t include words that are just taking up space and wasting the user’s valuable time ! Try to get rid of half the words on a page, then get rid of half of what’s left.
There is much more to be gained from this book. The above points are just those that stuck with me most. “Don’t make me think” is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in web usability and interface design.
References
- Krug, S. 2006, Don’t Make Me Think : A common sense approach to web usability, 2nd Edition, New Riders.
2 Comments to Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Krug
Hi Alistair,
Great book isn’t it, such a commonsense approach to things - and a lot less pious than (ahem) Jakob Nielsen, whose tone sometimes suggests he’d support gaol terms for those who break his principles.
I’ve always thought the best thing about the Krug book is the fact it’s so short - as he points out himself, you’re a lot more likely to read it if it’s usable in itself!
Cheers, Ian.
Julien PhalipSeptember 24, 2008
Thanks for the review, I’ll definitely check out this book. I agree with him that nothing ever beats gold-old common sense.
September 23, 2008