An excellent book that makes the reader think. Some quick highlights:
1. Use conventions unless you are genius.
2. Use visual hierarchies.
3. Break pages into clearly defined areas.
4. Make it obvious what’s clickable and what’s not.
5. Eliminate distractions.
6. Format content to support scanning.
Favourite quote – “Clarity trumps consistency”

يشرح ستيڤ بشكل بسيط ومرح مفهوم قابلية الاستخدام، الشيء الذي - حسب وصفه - يعتبر بديهي" لذوي التفكير السليم ".
يتمحور الكتاب حول فكرة واحدة، وهي أن “ لا تجعل المستخدم يفكر “، وأهمية كون صفحات الويب تشرح نفسها بنفسها وكيف لهذه الفكرة أن تولّد ثقة المستخدم في الموقع.
يناقش الكتاب أيضا طرق تصفح المستخدمين للمواقع، وحقيقة أنهم لا يقرؤون محتوايتها كلمة كلمة، لكنهم يمرون سريعا - جدا - باحثين عن كلمات مفتاحية ؛ مع ملاحظة أن هذا لا ينطبق على المدونات الشخصية والمواقع الأخبارية - غالبا -.
مع ذلك، فالكتاب - وللأسف - يفتقر إلى كثرة الأمثلة العملية، ولم يتعمق في بعض المسائل، هذا ما يجعله غير مناسب لمن تجاوزت خبرته الـ 3 سنوات في مجال تصميم واجهات المستخدم.

--
.الكتاب موجه كذلك لوروّاد الأعمال وعامة القراء، وهو مفيد جدا لمن أراد إنشاء أي مشروع إلكتروني

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 I will loan this out to my coworkers (I’m at an ecommerce agency) with the note that there are some outdated thoughts but overall good ideas.

این کتاب رو خودم یه نگاهی فقط بهش انداختم اما یکی از دوستان خلاصه‌ای رو ازش در اختیارمون گذاشت.
درسته که کتاب نسبتا قدیمی محسوب میشه اما نکات مهمی توش هست و به عنوان لیستی از چیزهایی که باید/نباید رعایت کنیم رو در بهمون میده.
برای شروع یو ایکس میتونه مفید باشه.

What comes to your mind when you think about usability in web design? “Less clicks is better”? “Design to the average user”? “Content is king”? “Users leave your website if it doesn’t load in X seconds”? If you take any of these as a rule for your websites then you need to read this book: Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug.

The Book

Although usability is becoming more and more popular among web projects these days, it is still an underrated feature. In this book, Steve Krug explains usability in a fun and direct way, using illustrations to mimic real life situations in which we all have been before. The examples and the websites featured in this book are a little outdated – the first edition was released in 2000 – but the problems are still around only with a modern design.

Myths and Tips

Every chapter contains precious gems and “facts of life” (as the author says) that show us how we really use websites. One example is the fact that he explains how we scan pages instead of reading them, and how this makes “content is king” a myth. Speaking about content, Steve Krug advices us to get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. This may sound weird, specially under a SEO point of view, but if you think again, by doing this you will end up having only the essential content (or keywords), the one that matters to your user.

Conclusion

Don’t let the fact that the book was originally written the year 2000 put you off. As I said before, we still face the same issues today. In 2005 was released the second version of this book which has three new chapters, including one where he talks about CSS & web usability and another one – one of the best IMHO – where he advices us on how to answer to our bosses when they have bad ideas. If you’re still wondering if buying the book is a good idea or not, the fact that it is recommended by Jeffrey Zeldman should be enough for you to buy it!

[Visit my website and read the book review.]

I absolutely love it when non-fiction books don't try to be so heavy in their content, and are able to communicate fascinating material with humour, tact and intelligence, and this book fits the bill to a tee.
I loved the style of writing, and for a book that was required reading for university, came away actually learning something and not feeling like it was a chore to pick it up, I even looked forward to it.

I loved the length too - too many authors seem to love the sound (sight?) of their own words, and ramble where not necessary, only causing confusion and more work for the reader (apt for the title of the book). I'm seriously considering buying this book as reference material.

I had a pact with some fellow web nerds at work to read a book on usability to improve our websites. I chose this one because, like a good website, it had short pages and a lot of white space. I was pleasantly surprised to actually enjoy the content as well as the writing style. It is concise, informative, practical, and humorous. Whereas Jakob Nielsen’s classic usability books are chock-full of statistics and details, this book is a new approach to usability, stripped down to what is practical and quickly measurable. Steve Krug's time- and money-saving method of web testing alone is worth the read for developers. Even casual web designers can benefit from the simple concepts and step-by-step “effective websites use this” lessons and examples.

Reading this book generated more ideas and interest in a needed web redesign than I thought possible. Its approach is not a heavy-handed laying down of rules, but descriptions of typical scenarios and problems and possible solutions in a way that stimulates creative thought in the reader. It’s formatted to be easily browsable and readable, making it a quick reference for web developers with time budgets—as if there were any other kind! This book will benefit anyone who is putting together a website, offering tips on making it more logical and informative, thus more popular among users.

This book was required reading for one of my grad school courses and I’m so glad it was! It’s a fantastic guide for graphic designers. The tone is practical and funny. I like lots of other design books this one was fun to read and I got a lot out of it. Absolutely recommend, especially if you’re new to the industry.

A nice overview of basic usability principles for building user interfaces. The call for do-it-yourself user testing is extremely important, though ignored or unknown to many companies. The sense of humor is great and the advice is fairly actionable and easy to follow.

The only downside (and hence a 4 star rating) is that the book could use more real world examples. Seeing many more screenshots of websites that do something well, side by side with those that do it poorly--or better yet, examples of incrementally improving a single design based on user testing--would make the lessons much more sticky.


Fun quotes from the book:

It's not rocket surgery.

The actual Average User is kept in a hermetically sealed vault at the International Bureau of Standards in Geneva.

What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are almost always large parts of the page that they don’t even look at. We’re thinking “great literature” (or at least “product brochure”), while the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.”

FACT OF LIFE #1: We don’t read pages. We scan them.

If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.

It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. —KRUG’S SECOND LAW OF USABILITY

The main thing you need to know about instructions is that no one is going to read them.

I think every Web development team should spend one morning a month doing usability testing. In a morning, you can test three users, then debrief over lunch. That’s it. When you leave the debriefing, the team will have decided what you’re going to fix before the next round of testing, and you’ll be done with testing for the month.

Experts are rarely insulted by something that is clear enough for beginners.

People are just as likely to be using their mobile devices while sitting on the couch at home, and they want (and expect) to be able to do everything. Or at least, everybody wants to do some things, and if you add them all up it amounts to everything.

After this book arrived, I realized it was the first-edition, which I assumed would make it woefully outdated in our fast-moving digital world. Still, I jumped in--and was surprised to discover that almost all of its information remains pertinent and valuable. Granted, many of its examples are of long-outdated sites (including--fascinatingly--Amazon's early days). But it's amazing how the basic principles have changed not at all. I picked up several interesting insights and tips and found the whole read to be quite enjoyable.

I can’t believe I hadn’t read this book before. I remember seeing the cover _everywhere_ for a long time but never looked into what it was. Anyhow. It’s about web usability and damn is it good.

It is well written, easy to understand and most things are not surprising at all, but the way they are packaged and presented leaves an impact.

Each paragraph has a short list of things that the reader could easily implement, leaving the feeling that improving is actually easy or at least starting is easy for anyone.

I will not look at web pages or our own product the same ever again.

A good book is usually the one that I “swallow” quickly and that sparks a few ideas. This was a good book and all product managers should read it. At the minimum it will at least confirm many of the things that you are already doing towards good usability but might also spark a few new ideas to level up.

Don't Make Me Think A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability, Second Edition, Steve Krug-- Review

Don't Make Me Think is a book about web usability. Usability is basically how easy it is too efficiently use a website. It tests how to make a website easier for the average visitor.

This book gives you insights into how to make a website easy to use. The first principle is to make your website as obvious as possible. For example, if the visitor is looking for employment information, it should use the most obvious words to describe employment like jobs or resume.

The other point it makes is that people don't read websites they do magazines or books, they scan through a website quickly. Most people do not want to scroll through screens of information. They want to go to the first place which gives them relevant information. They are seeking "satisficing", that is the place where they will get the information they need, not the best information.

Steve Krug describes how a website is more like a billboard than a magazine. The title should be prominently displayed on all the pages, and there should be a link back to the home page on every page. The most important piece of information on the web page should be the most visible.

Links should be obviously shown as links. This is why I usually put the full url in my blog posts for sites that you can visit.

Steve Krug quotes from The Elements of Style, "Omit needless words." He further says you must eliminate happy talk, marketing talk, and jargon from your site. People do not have very much patience on the internet.

There are some interesting concepts described about how people find things. He has many diagrams on how people seek out to buy things on the web. These diagrams explain how to make the experience quicker and easier. He also describes how to create a visual trail for the user on a web site. This often called "breadcrumbs." At times this gets a bit complex.

There is also a description of the basic elements of a homepage for a business. This book is mostly focused on business and professional websites, not the home user. It often describes how a development team in a business would build or test a website. This is my first experience with this kind of material.

Some of the elements in a professional homepage are search functionality, timely content, and shortcuts. He mentions that the title of websites should have a catchy tagline attached to them. This should explain exactly what the website is about.

The final chapters are how to do usability testing in a very inexpensive manner. He describes the basic setup with a camcorder, cabling, computers, and screen capture software. Then he tells how you can test a website with small groups of people to see whether or not it is easy for them to use. I understood the majority of this. However, it is not something I am planning on doing immediately.

Immediately after the cheap usability testing, he gives an outline of the context of what generates goodwill and bad will in a website. For example, some of the elements which generate goodwill are making it easy to recover from errors, putting in printer friendly pages, and knowing what the main thing people want in your website then implementing it.

The last few pages have several books which he recommends you read to improve your web site usability. Some of them look quite interesting. I may order several of them for my library. There is an index in the back of the book as well.

The book is illustrated in full color. There are pictures on almost every page. The artwork is pleasant to look and relevant to the content of the book. The book itself is designed so it is easy to read. The author claims you should be able to read through the book in about two hours. It took me three hours with several interruptions.

This book is very basic. It gives you an idea of what web usability is. I think it is helpful for basic tips on how to improve a website. The material is not advanced or complicated. It is the kind of thing you can read in an afternoon. This is a beginners book.