Don't Make Me Think, Revisited Quotes

“Demonstrate ROI. In this approach, you gather and analyze data to prove that a usability change you’ve made resulted in cost savings or additional revenue (“Changing the label on this button increased sales by 0.25%”). There’s an excellent book about it: Cost-justifying Usability: An Update for the Internet Age, edited by Randolph Bias and Deborah Mayhew.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“The problem is, the rewards and the costs of adding more things to the Home page aren’t shared equally. The section that’s being promoted gets a huge gain in traffic, while the overall loss in effectiveness of the Home page as it gets more cluttered is shared by all sections.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Since it was about design principles and not technology, I didn't think it was likely to be out of date anytime soon.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“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.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“My recommendation: Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“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 soon as we find a link that seems like it might lead to what we’re looking for, there’s a very good chance that we’ll click it.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“For instance, it means that as far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory. I should be able to “get it”—what it is and how to use it—without expending any effort thinking about it.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“And finally, a word about consistency. You often hear consistency cited as an absolute good. People win a lot of design arguments just by saying “We can’t do that. It wouldn’t be consistent.” Consistency is always a good thing to strive for within your site or app. If your navigation is always in the same place, for instance, I don’t have to think about it or waste time looking for it. But there will be cases where things will be clearer if you make them slightly inconsistent. Here’s the rule to keep in mind: CLARITY TRUMPS CONSISTENCY If you can make something significantly clearer by making it slightly inconsistent, choose in favor of clarity.”
― Krug Steve, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Having a Home button in sight at all times offers reassurance that no matter how lost I may get, I can always start over,”
― Krug Steve, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“the Site ID also needs to look like a Site ID. This means it should have the attributes we would expect to see in a brand logo or the sign outside a store: a distinctive typeface and a graphic that’s recognizable at any size from a button to a billboard.”
― Krug Steve, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“when I’m paying for my purchases on an e-commerce site, you don’t really want me to do anything but finish filling in the forms. The same is true when I’m registering, subscribing, giving feedback, or checking off personalization preferences. For these pages, it’s useful to have a minimal version of the persistent navigation with just the Site ID, a link to Home, and any Utilities that might help me fill out the form.”
― Krug Steve, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Web designers use the term persistent navigation (or global navigation) to describe the set of navigation elements that appear on every page of a site.”
― Krug Steve, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“the Home page is like the North Star.”
― Krug Steve, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“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.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“It’s not what we call ourselves that matters, it’s the attitude we bring and the skills we can contribute.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“FOCUS RUTHLESSLY ON FIXING THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEMS FIRST”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“There’s a good usability principle right there: If something requires a large investment of time—or looks like it will—it’s less likely to be used.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“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].”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Having something pinned down can have a focusing effect, where a blank canvas with its unlimited options—while it sounds liberating—can have a paralyzing effect.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“One way to look at design—any kind of design—is that it’s essentially about constraints (things you have to do and things you can’t do) and tradeoffs (the less-than-ideal choices you make to live within the constraints).”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“It’s good to do your testing with participants who are like the people who will use your site, but the truth is that recruiting people who are from your target audience isn’t quite as important as it may seem. For many sites, you can do a lot of your testing with almost anybody. And if you’re just starting to do testing, your site probably has a number of usability flaws that will cause real problems for almost anyone you recruit.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“I think the ideal number of participants for each round of do-it-yourself testing is three.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“What works is good, integrated design that fills a need—carefully thought out, well executed, and tested.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Clear, well-thought-out navigation is one of the best opportunities a site has to create a good impression.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.1”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“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.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“A lot of happy talk is the kind of self-congratulatory promotional writing that you find in badly written brochures. 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.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading all of our carefully crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click. What”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“The problem is there are no simple “right” answers for most Web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need—carefully thought out, well executed, and tested. That”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability