Last term during graduate course of HCI (Human computer interaction), my professor Dr. Maxine Cohen, a SUNY Ph.D. in Systems Science, created a WebCT forum thread called “HCI Resources”. Students were to post entries ranging from web based HCI resources to newspaper articles and books which they’ve found useful. Krug’s “Don’t make me think” subtitled as “A common sense approach to web usability” has made quite a mark among the listings by multiple mentions and was highlighted in several other assignment posts. This is when I started reading it and despite the common belief that technical books are selective reads, “Don’t make me think” is an addictive page turner in its right.
Krug’s book is generally based on KIS (Keep it simple) principle and is an easy read. Like the topic, book is aesthetically well designed and organized into distinct chapters addressing different topics of web usability and HCI in general. Chapter titles are not your-usual-everyday-headlines but rather Daily Onion style ones depicting the theme discussed in the chapter. Krug’s laws of usability may seem like common sense to most of us but you’d be amazed to see how many websites around us don’t follow these simple guidelines to enhance the user experience.
This two hundred page book is divided into eleven chapters and definitely deserves to be called “an illustrated guide on making your web presence meaningful!” Steve Krug has worked hard in providing us concrete details and no-fluff advice on all things web usability. With gentle wit and humor, he emphasizes on web designing for scanning instead of reading, presenting simple mindless choices to user, providing meaningful and short text and realization of business requirements for frequent changes. Along with pertaining illustrations, author has provided the reader interesting scenarios, comments, usability testing advice and web accessibility measures. For a web designer, developer, an application development manager or a technology devout CTO, this is a mind-opener towards realization of HCI’s importance in the business. “Don’t make me think” makes you think how important it is to understand that usability is not the enemy of design and contrary to common belief, it augments a good design. Among several acclaimed HCI books (for instance “User Interface Design and Evaluation - Morgan Kaufmann 2005, ISBN: 0-12-088436-4”) and ACM papers I have been through, I’ve found Krug’s laws to be most relevant and practical. It’s a highly recommended reading for web designers, content managers, web developers and all others who utilize web as core business tool or accessorize on it.
References:
Krug, Steve: Advanced Common Sense
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
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