web usability

When designing a website or online service, companies often have a whole slew of great ideas for functionality. When is enough enough? Can a simple design suffice? How do you make choices about what features to incorporate?

Even the simplest of interfaces, Twitter, has begun to add more complexity with new retweet features, lists, trending topics, and more. Aesthetically, “good design” means design that is appealing to the eye, and is easily navigated visually. With this idea, it is important that complex interfaces are well designed so that the users who prefer simplicity do not feel overwhelmed. – Finding the Balance of Design and Functionality (ReadWriteStart)

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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Balancing Good Design with Needed Functionality

Book Review – Don't Make Me Think, 2nd Edition