Don't Make Me Think!A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Steve Krug

published in 2015

first published in 2006

Nonfiction

✔ Available to borrow

owned in digital format

citation

Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Berkeley, Calif: New Riders Pub, 2006. Print.

big ideas

nobody reads your website, at best they skim it
we are inherently lost on the web, because there is no spatial reasoning. Most of you job is signage design.

review

A lot of gems of ideas in this one. Above all, I think it takes a grinder to the ego of software creatives, and reminds us that at the end of the day, people would love the chance to skip through your perfectly-tuned brand copy to get on with their busy lives.

rough notes

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.

One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.

I read them, which makes an interesting general point about chosen professions. In general, you care 10x more about the thing you make for a living than others.

Citation

Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. 2015. digital.