Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2003

Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think

by Karin Johnson
EBSTC Education Manager

Krug, Steve
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.
USA, Que, 2000, ISBN 0789723107

If you ever feel intimidated by usability manuals because you’re afraid you won’t understand them or the subject is too enormous, but you know you need to read, understand, and commit to memory the basic principles of creating a great web site, then this is the book for you.

Fun and Interesting

This book is a real page-turner, and it’s fun. It’s an easy read that can be finished during a long flight. The headings are clear yet humorous, as are the graphics, and the layout allows for generous amounts of white space, making it easy on the eyes.

This is a book about Web usability, or, as author Steven Krug puts it, "a common sense approach to Web usability." The idea is, the less a user has to think, the more usable the site. From our own experience, we know this to be true.

For Novice

Krug goes over many of the concepts we use often in our own work (the concepts being useful to any form of technical communication), all having to do with comprehension, cognition, intuition, and the like—and brevity. Krug believes that web sites are more usable when they contain only the words that are necessary, omitting superfluous text. He also discusses techniques for navigation, standards, communication, layout, and clarity. He adds a bit about recycling old material. Oh—and how about working within a budget? Yes, he covers that too.

And Pro

Even experienced communicators may learn a trick or two, or a new way of looking at the same old picture. Sometimes just by rephrasing a sentence you’ve read a thousand times, Krug brings new meaning to your design experience.

For example, Chapter 8 ponders the "myth of the average user." Krug states, "The belief that most Web users are like us is enough to produce gridlock in the average Web design meeting… The only problem is, there is no Average User. In fact, all of the time I’ve spent watching people use the Web has led me to the opposite conclusion: all Web users are unique, and all Web use is basically idiosyncratic."

Therefore, Krug explains that there are no simple answers to what is right for most web design questions. He believes that you must use good, integrated design that is planned to meet users’ needs and then test the design on real users.

New Approaches

In Chapter 9, his explanation of how to understand what a user really means when giving feedback can reveal a whole new approach to usability testing for someone who needs a fresh viewpoint. Particularly effective, the web page examples he uses are from real web sites that many of us have seen in our own browsing. When he discusses the pros and cons of a specific site, the examples give us a clearer understanding of what he is getting at.

Did I mention that this book is funny? For example, the foreword begins, "Steve Krug is blessed with a kind of short-term memory loss that allows him to see every Web site as if he is looking at it for the first time." See? It’s a completely disarming and inviting introduction to Joe Average—hey, that’s me! Maybe I’ll turn the page and find that I will understand this BIG topic after all.

And you will.

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