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

by Krug Steve

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.

If you can’t make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.

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

you’re not going to use an existing Web convention, you need to be sure that what you’re replacing it with either (a) is so clear and self-explanatory that there’s no learning curve—so it’s as good as the convention, or (b) adds so much value that it’s worth a small learning curve. My recommendation: Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t.

CLARITY TRUMPS CONSISTENCY If you can make something significantly clearer by making it slightly inconsistent, choose in favor of clarity.

A good visual hierarchy saves us work by preprocessing the page for us, organizing and prioritizing its contents in a way that we can grasp almost instantly.

On the face of it, “number of clicks to get anywhere” seems like a useful metric. But over time I’ve come to think that what really counts is not the number of clicks it takes me to get to what I want (although there are limits), but rather how hard each click is—the amount of thought required and the amount of uncertainty about whether I’m making the right choice.

In general, I think it’s safe to say that users don’t mind a lot of clicks as long as each click is painless and they have continued confidence that they’re on the right track—following what’s often called the “scent of information.”

Having a Home button in sight at all times offers reassurance that no matter how lost I may get, I can always start over, like pressing a Reset button or using a “Get out of Jail Free” card.

A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing [i.e., it’s learnable] to accomplish something [effective] without it being more trouble than it’s worth [efficient].