Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Krug Steve

Most of this book has been about building clarity into Web sites: making sure that users can understand what it is they’re looking at—and how to use it—without undue effort. Is it clear to people? Do they “get it”?

But there’s another important component to usability: doing the right thing—being considerate of the user. Besides “Is my site clear?” you also need to be asking, “Does my site behave like a mensch?”

On the other hand, if the 800 number is in plain sight—perhaps even on every page—somehow knowing that they can call if they want to is often enough to keep people looking for the information on the site longer, increasing the chances that they’ll solve the problem themselves.

Some sites hide pricing information in hopes of getting users so far into the process that they’ll feel vested in it by the time they experience the sticker shock.

Punishing me for not doing things your way.

Asking me for information you don’t really need.

You can lose goodwill if your site looks sloppy, disorganized, or unprofessional, like no effort has gone into making it presentable.

There may be times when you’ll choose to have your site do some of these user-unfriendly things deliberately. Sometimes it makes business sense not to do exactly what the customer wants.

For instance, uninvited pop-ups almost always annoy people to some extent. But if your statistics show you can get 10 percent more revenue by using pop-ups and you think it’s worth annoying your users, you can do it. It’s a business decision.

Know the main things that people want to do on your site and make them obvious and easy.

Tell me what I want to know.

Save me steps wherever you can.

generating the information I need to solve my problems, (b) making sure that it’s accurate and useful, (c) presenting it clearly, and (d) organizing it so I can find it.

Know what questions I’m likely to have, and answer them.

and our design processes need to be updated to include thinking about accessibility from the beginning.

To learn how to write good alt text—and in fact to learn how to do any of the things in this list—head over to webaim.org

Now the term you hear most often is User Experience Design, or just User Experience (UXD or UX, for short), and there are probably a dozen specialties involved, like Interaction Design, Interface Design, Visual Design, and Content Management—and, of course, Usability and Information Architecture—all under the UX umbrella.

UX sees its role as taking the users’ needs into account at every stage of the product life cycle, from the time they see an ad on TV, through purchasing it and tracking its delivery online, and even returning it to a local branch store.

So when someone tells you: “I’m in UX” or “Usability is so 2002—it’s all UX now,” smile graciously and ask them a few questions about how they’re learning about users, how they’re testing whether people can use what they’re building, and how they get changes to happen.

It’s not what we call ourselves that matters, it’s the attitude we bring and the skills we can contribute.

Demonstrate ROI.

Speak their language.

Talk about things like pain points, touch points, KPIs, and CSI, or whatever management buzzwords are trending in your organization.

unless it’s rigorously implemented there’ll always be someone who’ll claim that the added value was caused by something else. And learning to speak “business” can be challenging, too. That’s what MBA degrees are for.

Get your boss (and her boss) to watch a usability test.

Live games create memorable experiences; the evening news not so much.

Empathy is virtually a professional requirement for usability work. And if you’re interested in doing it, you’re probably empathetic too.

Your primary role should be to share what you know, not to tell people how things should be done.

I’d also recommend two books that can help.

Or read any of Susan Weinschenk’s books about the useful lessons that neuropsychology research can teach us about human motivation and decision making.

The real problem is that these people often aren’t actually asking for our help determining whether something is desirable, or even for help in figuring out how to make what they produce more desirable. Instead, they’re looking to usability to tell them how to make people think it’s desirable, i.e., to manipulate them.