Review of Don't Make Me Think

I found Don’t Make Think to not only be interesting but extremely informative. Not only did the book help breakdown the idea of web usability but it did so in very simple and short manner. It was explanatory and easy to follow along with and opened up my mind to thinking a little differently about the internet and how I do things on the internet. 

So what is usability? It is the idea that any normal person should be able to use a product without running into difficulties or becoming frustrated. It is the idea that something works well, is straight forward, and easy to use. This term applies to many different aspects of life including building a website. Throughout the book Steve Krug pinpoints ways in which you can make your website as user friendly as possible. 

One of the biggest lessons I think I learned was the whole concept of “Don’t Make Me Think.” A major emphasis is that a website should be pretty self-explanatory. I mean this in the sense that a website should be easy to navigate and interesting to look at. Users do not want to spend time on a website where they can’t find what they are looking for right away, and frankly if they start to get frustrated they could easily go to another website that has a more straightforward answer. Users can start to lose confidence in a site if they find that the site makes things more confusing than obvious. 

Another key point that I took away from Krugs insight was the idea of “scent of information.” Krug stated that users don’t necessarily mind clicking through a website but what they don’t want is to lose confidence in the website when each click is not leading them closer to their “prey.” He explains how “hard” each click is and how that can stop a viewer from going further into the site. Users don’t want to have to put much thought into what they’re doing so to have to continue to click through a website will eventually lose someones interest. As Kurg states, ambiguous and poorly worded links do not reassure users that they are getting closer to their end goal.

I also liked how he explained that you should not confront the audience with all the details of a topic at once. Rather, you should give them a general understanding of what they are about to click on and then from there let them dive in to what it is they’re looking for. If you have no option but to give a user a difficult choice then your best bet is to follow his three tips which include being brief, timely, and unavoidable. 

Lastly, I liked the tip about always having a “Home” button easily available on your website. It seems like such a simple and obvious tip, yet I think we could all agree that we have been on websites where you have to go back or come out of the site to even get back to the homepage. I thought it was funny how the easiest steps are sometimes the ones we need to be reminded to do.