Amazing book. Written in a casual tone but still hones in on the most important issues of website design. As a non tech person I was amazed by how easily I understood the content.

My old roommate Michael gave me this - its kinda 1999 but totally relevant, and a great starter to learn about web UI.

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Written in 2000, but updated in 2013, there were a lot of concepts that have been outdated in today’s web world.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.

Great primer or refresher course. Doesn’t go too deep but instead quickly to the point.

كتاب مميز و بسيط جداً
فكرته قائمة على العنوان " لا تجعلني أفكر "
فهو يعطي فكرة لكل مبرمج أو مطور للمواقع أن يقدم موقع للزائر بحيث يكون الموقع بسيط و سلس و واضح دون حاجة ذلك الزائر لإن يدخل - بالحيط - حتى يتمكن من فهم قصدك كمبرمج للموقع .
و حتى إن لم تكن مبرمجاً يمكنك بكل بساطة التعامل مع الكتاب

This was a great book for a starting point to website UI design. I have been designing websites and web bases applications for years and haven't ever stopped to think about usability, the 1st impression, and how to accomplish these effectively. Before reading this book I though I knew all there was to design, however this book has provided me with some additional needed insight.

This was a quick read, I expected this book to be very lengthy and provide design principles and examples. But what this book actually provided was really what I needed. It was quick and to the point at only 197 pages, with great examples of what to do and what not to do and WHY (the important part).

The only hang up on this book that I had was the content seemed a little outdated as things quickly do for web related topics.

But over all this will be a book that I recommend to our staff at RinoSoftware.

Quick, thorough, and to the point, as it suggests. Even inspired me to write a review, on the web. I don't even NEED to think twice to say this was a VERY GOOD * e^3 read!!

It really is a book that can stand the test of time, though all three iterations, it keeps the tone and message: "good web design starts with instinct of the user."

Krug's book focuses on web usability, fundamentals of good design, and user experience testing. Every web designer should get their hands on this as it is a reference for the mind about the mind! give it a go, it will have you thinking differently.

Subtitled - : A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability... This second edition of what could be considered the definitive book on web design. A must read for both professionals and enthusiasts. 8 out of 12.

a great guideline for anyone who is interested in designing websites and products. full of great examples and clear explanations. BUT the book is a little bit outdated especially the mobile view part.

“Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology.”

An essential book for anyone working on websites. The book title is the main point, but Krug does a good job at explaining how to go about doing web usability well. My favorite analogy is treating a website like a well organized store (like Lowes). A person can walk into a store and easily navigate it to accomplish the task at hand. We need to make sure websites are set up to do the same.

Usability hardly concerns strictly web use. This tidy introduction and exploration on the subject is a great background to many of the buzz words heard in the creative and development team departments. Also, makes many design decisions easy by providing research based and diplomatic responses to many territorial squabbles that arise when sites are designed/redesigned. It provides logical guided procedures for any stakeholder to understand the overall objectives of the website and make business decisions with full disclosure of usability consequences. This book is an endless champion for improving and maintaining users' "goodwill reservoir"

Even with professional background and experience in this topic for the past 5 years (not so long considering the way to go) and the historic printing of this book (even by web standards) of 2005, there is still much insight to glean and historical lessons concerning accessibility. If you are involved with web design, web-form design and even database architecture, this book may be worth a few hours of your time. Plus it refers to a robust further reading list.

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!