Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think

I'm a big fan of Steve Krug's book, Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. I'm feeling pretty guilty that I just purchased five copies of his book for my co-workers without visting his site first which would have resulted in him getting a hefty kickback from Amazon (via their Associate's program). Oh well.

So what's so great about this book? Well, it helps you get into the user's seat when you are looking at websites. When we work on our own websites, we very quickly get used to how we've laid them out and where things are and completely lose our ability to look at our website from the user's perspective. And if we're designing our websites for the people who visit them, learning this skill is very important.

Krug uses an image that has really worked well for me. He examines websites (in the book) and imagines the thought bubbles forming over the heads of the users. For example, one of his sample sites has a "search" box and a "quick search" box...so the obvious thought bubble that appears over all of our heads is "Hmmm, I guess these are different. I wonder how."

Do you suppose there are any thought bubbles over the head of first time visitors to a library website with a link to "Electronic Resources?" Or what about "Reader's Advisory?" These terms might make sense to us but I'll bet most civilians don't know what they mean.

Krug states that the way we really use the Web is that we scan pages, muddle through and choose the first reasonable option. We "satisfice."

Digression: This concept of satisficing which is a cross between satisfying and sufficing was coined by Herbert Simon who sounds like quite an interesting guy....

I find Krug's description of how we use the Web to be accurate in my experience. I certainly scan the pages and try my best to read as little as possible. I just want to get to the clicking part. What is there that I can click on that will give me the answer?

I don't take the time to try to understand the underlying strategy of how a website is organized. I most certainly muddle through and then judge harshly any site that doesn't accommodate my muddlesome approach. And as for satisficing...yea, fer sure.

The fact that users don't read the text on the page is one of those things that we have to accept and agree to design to. We know they aren't going to read most of what's there so figure out what you really want them to SEE and bring their focus to that. Maybe some reading will happen on the second or third link but we may as well just stop griping and complaining that "it's right there on our website" and design our top level pages for scanning...not reading....hey, are you still reading this?