Don’t Make Me Think! (Book Review)
I ran into an original copy of Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability this week. I’m familiar with Steve’s ideas already but had never gotten around to reading his often quoted book. This First Edition was published in about 2000 but a Second Edition has made it out as of 2006 so I’ll have to keep an eye out for a copy. The world has changed in that half a decade with mobile computing environments and so forth so it would be interesting to see any updates.
He’s written Don’t Make Me Think! from the perspective of what I’d call easy to read guidance. Its all fine and well to write academic tomes on the subject of usability practices but at the end of the day you need busy people - developers, coders, designers - to read the book. So its often tongue in cheek and uses strong everyday analogies - like comparing web navigation to going into a large hardware store and looking for a lawn mower. Is it in the tools section or gardening?
While a lot of the book is common sense it addresses some crucial parts of the problem space - who is the average user of our mythology? I’ve fallen into that cycle myself on many occasions citing the average user is X age or has Y attribute. While averages are interesting for their statistic its really not to be mistaken for the real user of the website. I also thought the overview of cheap and easy do-it-yourself usability testing on a shoestring was well written. Obviously seven years after this book was published these ideas have run past my desk regularly and most good web designers should have at least a passing knowledge in this area.
That being said, this was an older copy of this book and the second edition will be a little more contemporary to the web environment today. While the content of the book remains valid the second edition should expand well into new and interesting areas of human computer interaction. Maybe someone will send me a copy or I’ll see it in an office on my travels.
The true value of Don’t Make Me Think! is its usability (and readability) for people in the trenches. An excellent introductory book for web usability.
