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

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

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Don't Make Me Thin...

	Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition Steve Krug New Riders Press, 2005 - 216 pages average customer review:based on 452 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

excellent

An excellent resource for anyone who has any input into web design. Recommended to me by a designer and I find it very usable and an easy, fun read.

Practical

A very accurate and realistic look at the sociology behind user interface development and philosophies on how to deal with it. I recommend this book to all of my front-end developers.

Excellent book about web usability with lots of nice examples

"Don't Make Me Think" refers to the way people tend to use the web: they don't read they scan. That means that your site needs to be organized to make identification and navigation as instinctive as possible. Having an efficient navigation system and laying out your content to clearly reveal the embedded hierarchy should go a long way towards achieving this goal. Don't forget a good search function.

One of the main point the author want's you to get is that having external users to test your site will give you valuable insights on how you can make it work for them. He walks us through such a test scenario, which is quite useful.

There is also a chapter on accessibility, which is nice and which gives us an easy way to make our site quite accessible to most. My favorite idea is to add a "skip to main content" link to the top of all pages. By styling it with a "display: none" it won't affect any layout would be very useful for blind people using screen readers. Food for hought.

Classification is one topic on which I disagree with the author though it's only noted in a footnote. His view is that "things" should live in one place on your site and if necessary use cross-references to bring people there. I think that "things" should live in all the probable places a user might want to look for it. On one side you have a hierarchy on the other you have a tagging system. Given growing popularity and ubiquity of tags, I think that this won't be much of a stretch for anyone in the near future.

This book was certainly worth reading. I have learnt quite a few things and I recommend it to all web developers.

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A must-have

If you're involved in developing (as myself) or designing web-sites (or any other software intended for actual people), this book will give you helpful insights in the usability issues you are bound to encounter.

The book is very well written, and is fun to read.

What's up with the binding?

A nicely crafted book-like this one-that falls apart with no overuse is like a nice piece of clothing that won't stand the first wash. And we are not taking about cheap clothing here. But anyway, let's focus on what matters most: the content. I was expecting more from the book, but overall I don't feel disappointed. I wouldn't call the book simplistic because it heavily relies on common sense. After all, you don't have to go very far on the web to find sites where common sense seems to be the least used of all senses. The chapter on usability testing was particularly useful to me. And although nothing in the book was particularly striking or illuminating, I felt it made a positive contribution to my knowledge on the subject.

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