Most of us who are practitioners of website usability know that a good deal of good design, and good usability, is just applying some common sense. Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link), now in its 2nd edition, brings good web usability to the masses in a short format that can be read during a plane trip (which was one of Steve’s goals). Steve starts with the basics of web usability, what he terms “guiding principles”, and explains them in a way that will make sense even to CEOs. Once you understand these “guiding principles”, Steve uses them to illustrate general design principles that every website needs to get right. Each of the twelve chapters uses examples and big pictures (for the CEOS) to illustrate usability concepts, why they work and why they’re important.
Website usability is more important than ever with a large portion of business research conducted online. With the rise in popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, having good usability on multiple platforms will be extremely important. The principles and examples used in Krug’s book will help any business understand the basics of getting their website into shape so that they can reach a much larger audience (and stop annoying their current customers).
Even web designers and usability “experts” will find something useful in Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link), even if it’s just a great quote for a blog post on usability. I found some good quotes that you may see in future posts, but I also found some great new ways to illustrate usability principles that will help get the why across to businesspeople (which can be difficult, as we all are aware). Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link) was a quick and enjoyable read, even for someone very familiar (and passionate about) with web usability. I recommend giving it a read, no matter what your business role.
If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)
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Tagged as:
book review,
Business,
Usability,
web desgin,
web usability
{ 3 comments }
I’m a project manager for Web sites. If I could have any new project team member read just one book before bringing them onto the team, it would be this book.
Hands-down the best intro on the topic of usability and even more, website design.
I highly recommend this book as well. Great book for anyone to learn more about web usability. Especially helpful for those that are not very familiar with web at all. It communicates the subject in a very clear concise way that is easy to understand.
Josh & Kelly, thanks for sharing your opinion of the book. I obviously liked it, but it’s always good to hear that others share that feeling. I think its a great book especially for people who aren’t very familiar with usability – you can get up to speed very quickly.
Thanks for reading! Hope to hear from you again soon!
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