One of the shortest but sweetest books on web usability you can ever read. While it is website focused the learnings here almost fully apply to web and mobile apps (the revised edition also updates the book to the then new world of smartphones).

Being such a short read this should be a book you HAVE TO read if you work with anything that is web related.

Some great pointers which will definitely take into consideration. However, slightly out dated in parts which is no fault of its own, it’s just that UX / Design trends change over time. Time for a ‘Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited, Revisited’?

Honestly a banger. Easy read very visual and i used what i learned at work. Most is still relevant but some def outdated. Especially the mobile aspect. Section on accessibility is great

A refreshing read. I read through the 2nd edition about 10 years ago and I’m glad I jumped back in this year. I often find myself evaluating designs by asking “How would I know how to ...” and I think it’s effective but Steve Krug reminds us that kind of evaluation only goes so far. If you design a product you have to watch people try and use it to understand how it’s working and how it isn’t. Highly recommended.

Fun bonus for me: this edition mentions WordPress in the chapter on accessibility. I don’t remember that in the 2nd edition.

Conversational and helpful! I will loan this out to my coworkers (I’m at an ecommerce agency) with the note that there are some outdated thoughts but overall good ideas.

Claves:

1. No me hagas pensar.

2. La web está llena de convenciones: aprovéchalas.

3. Trata de hacer todo lo más evidente posible.

4. Las personas no leen páginas, las escanean (siempre están apuradas). Cuida las jerarquías.

5. La gente no averigua cómo funcionan las cosas, se dan golpes hasta que aprenden o se van de tu sitio. Elimina las instrucciones.

6. En los textos, deshazte de la mayor cantidad de palabras posibles.

7. Evita el ruido y los procesos engorrosos.

8. Mantén la navegación clara y sencilla.

9. Cometemos un error al pensar que la mayoría de los usuarios son como nosotros. Haz pruebas de usabilidad.

10. Para solucionar problemas: quita cosas, no agregues.

Tener en cuenta:

No es lo mismo tagline (describe value proposition) que motto (representa principios, visión e ideales)

Notas:

”When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks”

▶ Calificación Final: ⭐⭐⭐(3.4)

An excellent introduction to creating usable websites. As the title states, every website’s design and functionality should be so simple that people barely need to think to use it. The book’s 2nd edition is from 2005, so some examples are dated, but the concepts are quite relevant. This was a fun read due to its straightforward style and Krug’s humor.

When I started looking for web design books, Steve Krug’s classic on web usability frequently appeared at the top of most lists, along with Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman (see my review). I highly recommend both books.

Steve Krug’s Laws of Usability
First Law: Don’t make me think. Make things obvious and self-evident, or at least self-explanatory. People scan; they don’t read. People choose the first reasonable option. People muddle through things rather than figure them out.
Second Law: It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. Make choices mindless for ease of use.
Third Law: Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left. Be ruthlessly concise.

Usability testing
Test early and often. Test with 3 or 4 users. Have each user think out loud as they use the site. Use a screen recorder to record the session for reference. Fix any problems, then test again. Review the results as soon as possible.

Additional notes
Navigation helps users find things, tells them where they are, reveals content, and tells how to use the site. It must be good enough to help people who land on any page.
The home page should have a personable, lively tagline conveying a value proposition. The home page also needs a short, scannable welcome blurb describing the site.
Know what people want, and make those things obvious and easy.
Only ask for information necessary to complete the transaction.
Only make a site look good if it’s not at the expense of making it work well.

I’ve been working in software for my entire professional career. Except for the past year, I’ve been a backend software engineer for backend code in data platforms, web apps, and operations. Throughout my years as an engineer, I’ve neglected studying design. It’s always been the elusive facet of product development that Ive appreciated, but never come to understand.

I’ve dabbled in different design tools to create sample mockups for products I wished to build, but I always copied what looks good instead of putting design pieces together. This year, I wanted to change my perception of design and learn how a designer thinks when working on a project. To start my journey as an amateur designer, I thought best to begin with the fundamental books about web design. That’s is how I was led to Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think.

I started reading it with high hopes. It began with a friendly welcoming attitude to the world of design – a world I had only experienced from the outside. With Krug’s definition of usability, I learned some basic principles that I had only heard vaguely mentioned by colleagues in the past. However, after these abstract principles, I felt the rest of the book wasn’t as helpful as I was expecting.

Written in 2000, but updated in 2013, there were a lot of concepts that have been outdated in today’s web world. The majority of the chapters were written with concrete examples, and while some layout tips might be applicable to today’s modern apps, the rest were artifacts of an older browsing history.

Obviously, rapid changes are extremely difficult to account for when writing a book about the design of the web. Because of this difficulty, it would have been better to have discussed the top usability concepts, rather than specific examples. A great example of this issue is the entire chapter dedicated to the Home page.

Another nit picky problem I had while reading was the unnecessary amount of book recommendations. It’s one thing to source where a concept has come from, but it’s another to introduce the importance of a specific usability application (e.g. font styles and sizes), then spend a few sentences introducing it and instead of summarizing it, recommend an entire book on the subject. I came for a distillation of usability principles and applications, not to build a library of books that I’m never going to get to.

The worst offender was the accessibility chapter. Two of the four recommendations to fix the problem of accessibility was to read an article and another book! That’s not the type of advice I’m looking for when I’m reading a book about usability.

Nonetheless, I did learn a few interesting helpful tips about usability. The chapter on usability testing and DIY testing solidified some high level understandings I had about user testing. There were also multiple instances where I said “ohhh” out loud after learning the “why” behind UX concepts (e.g. goodwill reservoir) that I heard colleagues mention but never clarified.

Unfortunately, these instances were short and far between. Instead, I had to wade streams of light-jokes and quirky writing that got annoying after awhile. Even the random off topic footnotes the author injected got tiresome by the end. I get that he was trying to give the text some mensch, but it wasn’t landing for me.

Overall, this wasn’t the book I was hoping for. I wasn’t trying to get buy in from my manager to perform usability tests. I wasn’t trying to compare UX to usability. Instead, I wanted to learn about some core principles of UX and design that I could use in my daily workflow. I guess I’ll have to keep looking.

5/5 - An excellent book, well written and easy to read, with highly actionable insights!

After finishing this, I want to get to work and redesign stuff I've made and also do some usability tests :D

The book is only as long as it should be, with no fluff and nice examples.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone designing a digital interface. Moreover, even if you are not a front-end developer I still think there are some chapters which are valuable on their own for any product maker (usability tests).

Tasarıma yeni başlamış ve başlamak isteyen herkesin mutlaka okuması gereken "Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability", nokta atışı tespitleri ve örnekleriyle harikulade bir başlangıç kitabı. Öte yandan, her ne kadar içerik bakımından günümüze uyarlanmaya çalışılsa da verdiği zaman aşımına uğramış örneklerin özellikle deneyimli tasarımcılar için yararlı olduğunu söylemek pek de mümkün değil. Yine de bilgileri tazeleme veya kendinizi test etme konusunda güzel bir okuma olabilir.

09.04.2022
Londra, Birleşik Krallık

Alp Turgut

This book is what it states - a common sense approach to web usability.

The book lays bare the facts, that -
1. Users do not read the text in a web page.
2. Users muddle through a web page, no matter how well thought out the layout, and menus are.
And as a designer, your task is to take these two facts into account when designing your website.

The author, Steve Krug, is very perceptive. While this is evident throughout the book, what did it for me was the footnote about the Site ID being on the top right corner in web pages with right to left languages, and his comment about inconsistent navigation options in many sites once you are two or three pages deep. The first one is a nice call-out, the second - I've been burnt by it so many times!

The section that talks about how to resolve "design" (people) problems, when members of different teams prefer one design over another, is a life-saver for any Project / Development / Product Manager. It clearly brings the focus back to the problem - are we doing the right thing for the intended users of this website?

The graphic showing what a webpage means to a CEO, Developer, Designer, and Marketing, nails each group's perspective on the head.

The difference between a focus group, and a usability testing team is explained well.

The chapters on usability testing is a must read for all QA teams. The table showing how much it would cost to do "Get it" and task-based usability testing is very concise, and useful. I would recommend taking this no-frills approach; a part of my org's development methodology.

That said, the book is roughly ten years old. The principles, no doubt, still hold good. But, it would be nice to see an updated version that talks about
1. The proliferation of social media, and how to design for that.
2. Web-based Enterprise application UI design.

#2 above is closer to home for me. Type of question that I would like to be tackled - In web based Enterprise apps that specifically deal with a particular vertical (say Insurance), how much can you assume that the user knows about the domain, and consequently, how does that affect your design?

The book is well laid out, and you can see evidence of the author eating his own dog food. The footnotes offer interesting segues (sometimes not about web usability), and the Recommended Reading section is a big plus.

It is an easy read, at a little under 200 pages - no reason your web dev team can't find time to read (and re-read) it!