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

by Krug Steve

I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. But I’d like to clarify a few things.

Being a consultant, I get to work on interesting projects with a lot of nice, smart people. I get to work at home most of the time and I don’t have to sit in mind-numbing meetings every day or deal with office politics. I get to say what I think, and people usually appreciate it. And I get paid well.

If something requires a large investment of time—or looks like it will—it’s less likely to be used.

It’s like golf: a handful of ways to get the ball in the hole, a million ways not to.

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.

When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks.

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

satisfice.

Ginny Redish’s book Letting Go of the Words.

www.20q.net

Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible.

I think it’s also a good idea to include Home with the main sections of the site.

(If you use “Search” as the label for the box, use the word “Go” as the button name.)

Adding “Type a keyword” is like saying, “Leave a message at the beep” on your voice mail message: There was a time when it was necessary, but now it just makes you sound clueless.

I think this is one of the most common problems in Web design (especially in larger sites): failing to give the lower-level navigation the same attention as the top. In so many sites, as soon as you get past the second level, the navigation breaks down and becomes ad hoc. The problem is so common that it’s actually hard to find good examples of third-level navigation.

But the reality is that users usually end up spending as much time on lower-level pages as they do at the top.

Page names are the street signs of the Web.

The name needs to match what I clicked.

The name of the page will match the words I clicked to get there.

Use > between levels. Trial and error seems to have shown that the best separator between levels is the “greater than” character (>),

Boldface the last item.

When I do usability tests, I’m surprised at how often people can overlook horizontal navigation bars at the top of a Web page.

For tabs to work to full effect, the graphics have to create the visual illusion that the active tab is in front of the other tabs.

What site is this? (Site ID) What page am I on? (Page name) What are the major sections of this site? (Sections) What are my options at this level? (Local navigation) Where am I in the scheme of things? (“You are here” indicators) How can I search?

the reality is that we’re often dropped down in the middle of a site with no idea where we are because we’ve followed a link from a search engine, a social networking site, or email from a friend, and we’ve never seen this site’s navigation scheme before.

Good taglines are just long enough, but not too long. Six to eight words

Don’t confuse a tagline with a motto,

a tagline conveys a value proposition.

If you’re going to do your own recruiting, I recommend that you download the Nielsen Norman Group’s free 147-page report How to Recruit Participants for Usability Studies.

During the break after each test session, observers need to write down the three most serious usability problems they noticed during that session so they can share them in the debriefing. You can download a form I created for this purpose from my Web site.

You can download the script that I use for testing Web sites (or the slightly different version for testing apps) at rocketsurgerymadeeasy.com

If the participant stops saying what they’re thinking, prompt them by saying—wait for it—“What are you thinking?”

(For variety, you can also say things like “What are you looking at?” and “What are you doing now?”)

“What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

Hi, Janice. My name is Steve Krug, and I’m going to be walking you through this session. Before we begin, I have some information for you, and I’m going to read it to make sure I cover everything. You probably already have a good idea of why we’ve asked you to come here today, but let me go over it again briefly. We’re testing a Web site that we’re working on so we can see what it’s like for people to use it. The session should take about an hour. I want to make it clear right away that we’re testing the site, not you. You can’t do anything wrong here. In fact, this is probably the one place today where you don’t have to worry about making mistakes. We want to hear exactly what you think, so please don’t worry that you’re going to hurt our feelings. We want to improve it, so we need to know honestly what you think. As we go along, I’m going to ask you to think out loud, to tell me what’s going through your mind. This will help us.

If you have questions, just ask. I may not be able to answer them right away, since we’re interested in how people do when they don’t have someone sitting next to them to help, but I will try to answer any questions you still have when we’re done. And if you need to take a break at any point, just let me know.

You may have noticed the microphone. With your permission, we’re going to record what happens on the screen and what you say. The recording will be used only to help us figure out how to improve the site, and it won’t be seen by anyone except the people working on the project. It also helps me, because I don’t have to take as many notes. Also, there are a few people from the Web design team observing the session in another room. (They can’t see us, just the screen.)

If you would, I’m going to ask you to sign a simple permission form for us. It just says that we have your permission to record you, but that it will only be seen by the people working on the project.

Do you have any questions before we begin?

Before we look at the site, I’d like to ask you just a few quick questions. First, what’s your occupation? What do you do all day?

I’ve never heard of that before. What does a router do, exactly?

OK. Now, roughly how many hours a week would you say you spend using the Internet, including Web browsing and email? Just a ballpark estimate.

What’s the split between email and browsing—a rough percentage?

What kinds of sites are you looking at when you browse the Web?

Do you have any favorite Web sites?

Really? What kind of snake?

OK, great. We’re done with the questions, and we can start looking at things.

First, I’m just going to ask you to look at this page and tell me what you make of it: what strikes you about it, whose site you think it is, what you can do here, and what it’s for. Just look around and do a little narrative. You can scroll if you want to, but don’t click on anything yet.

If you had to take a guess, what do you think it might be?

OK. Now, if you were at home, what would you click on first?