Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

The book is short by design which makes it an easy read. In the words of the author, "you can read it on a flight." Although there are 12 chapters, most of them are fairly short, with only two chapters taking up more than 5 or 6 pages. The author writes with a style that is engaging and witty, which keeps you interested in the book. He starts out with a brief explanation of why he wrote a second edition and what has changed in this book compared to the first edition. Once he gets that out of the way, he dives right into "Krug's first law of usability" (hint: its the title). He talks about the way many sites implement the same type of features, and what makes one better over the other. Krug points out that there is a big difference between how most designers think users see their site, and how those users actually do see it. Designers tend to think that a visitor to their site will read through every single word on the page, taking in all this great copy and information that we spend so much time on. In reality, users scan pages rather than read them. They load a site and immediately begin looking for something that is close to what they think will let them complete the task they have in mind. After talking through these differences, Krug offers solutions to help a site cater more to the user that just scans. One thing that Krug does keep to a minimum is talk about the proper way to do this or the correct way to do that when building a site. What he does try to convey in this book are some guiding principles for better usability. He discusses proper navigation and sub-navigation techniques as well as arranging content so that it is clear what section of the site a user is in. The two chapters in the book that Krug commits the most time to covers what are probably two of the most important parts of any site: Navigation and the Home Page. He talks at length about navigation, specifically using the navigation to show a user where they currently are and where they have been. In both cases, real world sites are used to illustrate examples of good and bad navigation design. Krug also exalts the usefulness and importance of the breadcrumb. If you have been thinking of conducting usability testing, but wrote it off as a luxury that you or your client couldn't afford, Krug helps smash that myth. With as little as $300, you can run a simple usability test. He even goes as far as to provide details of how to set up the test and a script you can follow if you are unsure of exactly what to ask. All in all, this is a great book for web designers at any level. It helps put little nuggest of information in your head that you can pull out when designing and building a site to improve things as you build them. If you are new to usability, this book will help show you some simple solutions to common usability issues. The bottom line is that improving the usability of your site will improve your site overall, and this book offers the advice that will help you do that.

Steve Krug's, "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability," is as good as any web page design and development management book around. It's style is based on the principles Krug lays forth of simplicity, minimize textual content, and don't tax people's already overloaded brains. The way the book was designed, thus, has Krug practicing what he preaches, at all of our benefit. I have been in a position in corporate America to manage a corporate web site since December of 2006. After some precursory research on my favorite little book store: Amazon, I came up with Krug's web usabilty book on favorite listmania after favorite listmania. "Don't Make Me Think," made it on the top list for web designers, web page project managers, business owners, and average Joes and Jill like you and me. So I wanted to start my professional reading with a book that had some common collective wisdom behind it. Lo and behold, I was not disappointed. Krug's book is probably best read through practice. I have already spouted off several of his principles at our weekly web page project meetings and I can tell folks are looking at me a little different these days. It could be because I'm going through my mid-life crisis and started wearing a goatee and using all this metero hair product, but I don't think that's the reason alone. I suspect it's because I scanned Krug's cartoons and sent them out to the members of our working group and executive council. I love the frame that has the project manager getting caught up in a web page design "religious debate," between a creative designer and a practical programmer with a thought bubble over her head saying, "I hate my life." Funny stuff. You'll have to read this book and sit through one of the web page design meetings to see its true truth and wisdom. Though I've learned if you try to enact some of Krug's principles like having navigation tabs similar to those found on Amazon, you just may start some religious debates of your own. The book has a little something for everyone. For the web page design and management neophytes like myself, it has to be one of the best introductions to the ins and outs of what really works on web sites for engaging Internet users in such a way that keeps them coming back for more. For seasoned professionals in the industry, Krug's book will no doubt cause you to be challenged in your thinking, wrestle with how to gain control back from your overly-busy home page, and what can now be done with all that text you were stuffing your overly boring corporate site that no one really bothers to read. For me the book started to drag with the two sections of web site testing. But, we recently stood up a new functionality feature that was in sore need of troubleshooting testing before pushing it live. Believe it or not, designers and ad agency managers don't catch very many mistakes before letting their clients view the page. So I found myself referring back to Krug's book to see how best to approach testing. As it turned out our work team, and some family members, caught the majority of the mistakes and folks were very happy with the final product. Another thing to watch out for is that Krug is giving advice based on what works best for the user of web page sites. Some of his advice is contrary to what I've experienced in my professional life in regards to search engine optimization. Krug says to cut out extraneous and unneeded text which is all fine and good for your web page readers, but will not get your page optimized (when a person types in keywords to yahoo or google...your page hitting the top of the search results list). So, just watch for that if you are more interested in people finding your web site vs. having an optimally pleasant experience once they get there. So, Steve Krug is my new best friend and has helped me keep my job for another month. I think if you pick up a copy of, "Don't Make Me Think," you will be thinking Krug is your best friend too, with his egregious wit and practical knowledge of what works and doesn't on Internet web sites. He even does a minor overhaul of Amazon's site. You won't want to miss it. ...mmw

All in all, while there doesn't seem to be a ton of NEW information for web designers that have been in the field for a few years or more, Steve does a fantastic job of taking all of the bits of knowledge and tying them together in a cohesive, easily understandable structure, shedding new light and insight along the way. That's not to say there is NO new information. Everyone will find something in here that they didn't know before. More importantly, however, are Steve's perspectives into really making what you already know work for you. The book does a great job of breaking down the web design process in an easy to digest step-by-step process, calling out challenges, obstacles, and no-brainers along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed having lots of what I'd picked up over the years brought into focus and examined through new filters. The one thing that I wish this book had is a detachable checklist. Or one that you can download and print from his website, [...] Now that the entire process is broken down and defined, it would have been nice to have a quick-reference checklist for practical use a day-to-day operations.

As an inexperienced web design student, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. I was pleasantly surprised to find humorous, understandable explanations and tips for those new to web development. This book would also be relevant for experienced web designers as Krug presents timeless tips to improve usability and design for the users. The tips are timeless, but references to VHS might make you chuckle and realize how far technology has come even within the few years since the 2nd edition was published. Krug keeps the technology references to a minimum, so this book will continue to be relevant, even when those reading the book don’t know what a VHS looks like. The information was well organized in easy to digest sections. The book is short enough to keep your attention, but packed with helpful information from basic principles to designing for accessibility. Krug includes practical, real-life examples along with visual side-by-side comparisons to demonstrate his guidelines. I would recommend this book for any level of web designer/developer and anyone involved with a website (whether you fund, build, design, write for, market or even use a website). The principles discussed in the book can be translated to other forms of communication as well, so it would be helpful for anyone in a communications position. This book will be staying within reach at work as it is one that I will reference again and again.

I like to wait a week or 2 after reading a book to decide how much I really got out of it. The answer for this book was "not much". The main take-home messages were "don't use so many words" and "usability testing is important and easy to do yourself". I just didn't get much out of it. The look & feel of most of the examples were so dated it was painful at times. Most of the content was really shallow and I didn't think told me any more than I already knew. I guess I would recommend not getting this book if you have ANY previous experience reading web design journals or any other books on the subject. That being said, some of the examples in the book were worth seeing, and I liked the for-anyones-use letters to bosses who want you to do terrible things at the end of the book. I was also really interesting the the usability testing portion of the book - but it was also too shallow. Maybe I'll give the "rocket surgery made easy" book a try. Worth borrowing but not buying.

Steven Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition will make you rethink how you look at every web page you visit. This book was reading for my Internet Marketing college course and this was possible the most interesting read I have ever been assigned for college. The book is very short and there's a reason. Conciseness is a main theme of the book. It gets right to the point without forcing the reader to read anything unnecessary. He has very valid points about web page design and format. Not only are they valid but they should be the rules for any web designer. If you are a web designer, this book is a must. If you are a small business owner who wants their website to look and feel like a Fortune 500's, this book is a must. Anyone involved in web development needs to read this book! It is a quick and easy read that can make or break your website.

This book is fabulous. It is very clear and easy to read, it points out how far you can get by just using common sense (and how you can develop it if you haven't got it), includes basic design principles and human psychology as well as some pretty strong examples. It shows you how a usability test can be performed and talks about what you should focus on. I very much like the approach that there is no average user and not just one correct way to design a site. This book is of great value, a true classic and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topic. It is so well layouted and designed that I don't need a marker to highlight anything!

Nowadays, most students are faced with the world of HTML and computer science at some point in their academic careers. For me, the first time was in CIS 101 in college. (Yes, there was a second time. It turns out grad school does not assume computer literacy). Although it isn't always part of the formal curriculum, usability is always an underlying theme in technology classes even if it is just a question of whether the HTML textbook is actually written in gibberish or not. Usability is also one of the few fields where anyone, even the computer illiterate, can be an expert. The idea behind usability is simple: Look at a given design and see how accessible it is for users. Anyone can have an opinion on usability and everyone can provide input. All it takes is a clear head and the patience to look at what works (or doesn't) and why. If you use it, you have information about its usability. To get back to the subjects of Computer Science and technology, usability has lately been applied to the world of Web design. Usability consultant Steve Krug lays out all of the basics about Web usability in his book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability currently in its second edition, published in 2006 after the first edition sold nearly 100,000 copies. As far as titles go, there are few that offer as clear a picture of the book's content as this one. Krug's main point throughout his 185-page guide is that good Web sites don't make users think. Unlike college, Krug posits that using a conventional website should not be an intellectual exercise. It should be simple, it should be neat, and it should be self-evident. In other words, if a user cannot identify the site's purpose, and where to start on said site, just by viewing the homepage something has gone horribly wrong. Krug details how to fix such problems and how to avoid them with usability tests. That may sound self-serving save for the fact that Krug also explains how to conduct usability tests on the cheap without the benefit of a usability consultant such as himself. Written in short chapters packed with illustrations, this book is designed to be approachable and easy to read. Krug is serious about Web usability, but that in no way means his book is stodgy or dry. Examples of usability at work are littered with cartoons and the text maintains a sense of humor. My favorite chapter title (and subtitle) "Usability as common courtesy: Why your Web site should be a mensch" might offer some idea of what tone to expect from this book. Of course, taking a computer class to meet a core requirement in college doesn't always lead to work in the field of Web design in fact most of the time it leads to an entirely different career. But, in today's technology-driven culture, doesn't everything come back to the Internet eventually? It might just be working as an intern at an online magazine, or a starting position where duties include entering data into online spreadsheets, or it might just be writing your own blog on a site like WordPress or Blogger. Wherever your path leads, knowing something about Web usability and how good Web sites get that way can only help. As more and more information moves to cyberspace, with websites being created and updated all the time, it's important to be prepared by knowing how to analyze not only the information found online but also how it is presented. Don't Make Me Think is one tool that can assist Web users in that preparation.

I've read that book few years ago (then sold it and finally bought it again) and it's a real must if you need to think about the user's experience when developing a web site (I mean, you HAVE to think about it if you're the designer/developer who's in charge of deciding the structure and look of it). The principles in this book are really important. It's small size make it easy to read and it's a lot more entertaining than other books like Jacob Neilson's Web Usability...

サイト全体の構成やナビゲーションの見せ方なども参考になりますが、この辺りならwebデザインをやっているうちに体得している範囲かもしれません。でも改めて読むと、サイトの見方や作るときの意識が変わります。 特に役に立ったのは、ユーザビリティーの章です。実際の被験者とのやりとりも台本のように事細かく書かれているので、これをじっくり読んでおけば、自分の作ったサイトをもとに、テストをする立場になってテストを行うことも出来るかと思います。 また、絵やチャートも多く、英語もさほど難しい表現は使ってないので、読みやすいと思います。筆者が言うよう「飛行機の長旅で1冊読み終えてしまう」感じのボリュームかと思います。

I'm sure the physical edition is fine, but DO NOT BUY THE KINDLE EDITION. The format is all messed up, it's basically unreadable.

excelente libro para tenerlo como cabecera y darle a nuestras páginas interés y ser amenas al visitante. Puntos y explicaciones que hacen reflexionar.

Ich bin zwar technisch bewandert, aber für mich ist dieses Buch mein erstes zum Thema Usability allgemein, deshalb kann ich nur aus der Sicht eines Einsteigers berichten. Das Buch überrascht mit lockerer Schreibweise und vielen anschaulichen Bildern, treffenden Commics und Beispielen. Inhaltlich waren zwei Themen besonders intressant: die Einblicke in die Art und Weise, wie Webseiten benutzt werden und besonders die Beispiele in denen gezeigt wird, wie man die Benutzbarkeit von Websites verbessern kann bzw. was man besser nicht machen sollte. Um Missverständnissen vorzubeugen: das Buch bzw. dessen Inhalt ist kein Rezept womit jegliche Usability-Hürde genommen wird, aber es ist ein guter Ratgeber mit allgemeinen Tipps und nachvollziehbaren Begründungen. "Don't Make Me Think!" ermöglicht einen differenzierten Blick auf die Dinge, die man sonst so selbstverständlich im Web benutzt. Fazit: Für Web Usability Einsteiger ist dieses Buch sehr zu empfehlen. Es lässt sich ohne sonderliche technische Kentnisse lesen und verstehen (sofern ich das beurteilen kann).