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

by Krug Steve

Like a lot of common sense, though, it’s not necessarily obvious until after someone’s pointed it out to you.3 3 ...which is one reason why my consulting business is called Advanced Common Sense. “It’s not rocket surgery” is my corporate motto.

Designing, building, and maintaining a great Web site or app isn’t easy. It’s like golf: a handful of ways to get the ball in the hole, a million ways not to. Anyone who gets it even half right has my admiration.

I think you can learn more from looking at good designs than bad ones.

Useful: Does it do something people need done? Learnable: Can people figure out how to use it? Memorable: Do they have to relearn it each time they use it? Effective: Does it get the job done? Efficient: Does it do it with a reasonable amount of time and effort? Desirable: Do people want it? and recently even Delightful: Is using it enjoyable, or even fun?

If something is usable—whether it’s a Web site, a remote control, or a revolving door—it means that A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it’s worth.

KRUG’S FIRST LAW OF USABILITY

“What’s the most important thing I should do if I want to make sure my site or app is easy to use?”

“Don’t make me think!”

All kinds of things on a Web page can make us stop and think unnecessarily. Take names, for example. Typical culprits are cute or clever names, marketing-induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names.

The point is that every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand.

The most important thing you can do is to understand the basic principle of eliminating question marks.

You can’t make everything self-evident

Here’s the rule: If you can’t make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.

Making every page or screen self-evident is like having good lighting in a store: it just makes everything seem better.

As a result, if Web pages are going to be effective, they have to work most of their magic at a glance. And the best way to do this is to create pages that are self-evident, or at least self-explanatory.

When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page,

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.

FACT OF LIFE #1: We don’t read pages. We scan them.

FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.

In reality, though, most of the time we don’t choose the best option—we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as satisficing.1

As it turned out, the fire commanders didn’t compare any options. They took the first reasonable plan that came to mind and did a quick mental test for possible problems. If they didn’t find any, they had their plan of action.

Satisficing is more efficient.”

FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.

If we find something that works, we stick to it. Once

Stick with fave workarounds

We’ll use a better way if we stumble across one, but we seldom look for one.

I think the answer is simple: If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.

My recommendation: Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t.

Even more important: Don’t let your headings float. Make sure they’re closer to the section they introduce than to the section they follow. This makes a huge difference.

It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.

This guidance works best when it’s Brief: The smallest amount of information that will help me Timely: Placed so I encounter it exactly when I need it Unavoidable: Formatted in a way that ensures that I’ll notice it

When to give advice

Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. —KRUG’S THIRD LAW OF USABILITY

When I look at most Web pages, I’m struck by the fact that most of the words I see are just taking up space, because no one is ever going to read them.

But certain kinds of writing tend to be particularly prone to excess.

Happy talk must die

Unlike good promotional copy, it conveys no useful information, and it focuses on saying how great we are, as opposed to explaining what makes us great.

Instructions must die

The main thing you need to know about instructions is that no one is going to read them—at least not until after repeated attempts at “muddling through” have failed.

“search-dominant” users)

“link-dominant” users)

The moral? Web navigation had better be good.

“religious debates,”

ALL WEB USERS ARE UNIQUE AND ALL WEB USE IS BASICALLY IDIOSYNCRATIC

The point is, it’s not productive to ask questions like “Do most people like pull-down menus?” The right kind of question to ask is “Does this pull-down, with these items and this wording in this context on this page create a good experience for most people who are likely to use this site?”

And there’s really only one way to answer that kind of question: testing.

There’s no substitute for it.

Repeat after me: Focus groups are not usability tests.

If you want a great site, you’ve got to test.

But I finally realized that testing is really more like having friends visiting from out of town. Inevitably, as you make the rounds of the local tourist sites with them, you see things

about your hometown that you usually don’t notice because you’re so used to them. And at the same time, you realize that a lot of things that you take for granted aren’t obvious to everybody.

Experts are rarely insulted by something that is clear enough for beginners.