Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 3rd Edition

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 3rd Edition

by Steve Krug
Released December 2013
Publisher(s): New Riders
ISBN: 9780133597271

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Book description

Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject.

Now Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.

If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.

“After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.”

–Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Contents
  5. Preface: About this edition
  6. #1. Let’s face it: It’s old
  7. #2. The world has changed
  8. Don’t get me wrong...
  9. Introduction: Read me first
    1. The bad news: You probably don’t have a usability professional
    2. The good news: It’s not rocket surgery™
    3. It’s a thin book
    4. Not present at time of photo
    5. Now with Mobile!
    6. One last thing, before we begin
  10. Guiding Principles
    1. Chapter 1. Don’t make me think!
      1. “Don’t make me think!”
      2. Things that make us think
      3. You can’t make everything self-evident
      4. Why is all of this so important?
      5. So why, then?
    2. Chapter 2. How we really use the Web
      1. FACT OF LIFE #1: We don’t read pages. We scan them.
      2. FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
      3. FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.
      4. If life gives you lemons...
    3. Chapter 3. Billboard Design 101
      1. Conventions are your friends
      2. Create effective visual hierarchies
      3. Break up pages into clearly defined areas
      4. Make it obvious what’s clickable
      5. Keep the noise down to a dull roar
      6. Format text to support scanning
    4. Chapter 4. Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?
      1. Some assistance may be required
    5. Chapter 5. Omit needless words
      1. Happy talk must die
      2. Instructions must die
      3. And now for something completely different
  11. Things You Need to Get Right
    1. Chapter 6. Street signs and Breadcrumbs
      1. Scene from a mall
      2. Web Navigation 101
      3. The unbearable lightness of browsing
      4. The overlooked purposes of navigation
      5. Web navigation conventions
      6. Don’t look now, but I think it’s following us
      7. Did I say every page?
      8. Now I know we’re not in Kansas
      9. The Sections
      10. The Utilities
      11. Just click your heels three times and say, “There’s no place like home”
      12. A way to search
      13. Secondary, tertiary, and whatever comes after tertiary
      14. Page names, or Why I love to drive in L.A.
      15. “You are here”
      16. Breadcrumbs
      17. Three reasons why I still love tabs
      18. Try the trunk test
    2. Chapter 7. The Big Bang Theory of Web Design
      1. And you have to do it...blindfolded
      2. The First Casualty of War
      3. But...the Home page? Really?
      4. How to get the message across
      5. Nothing beats a good tagline!™
      6. Tagline? We don’t need no stinking tagline
      7. The fifth question
      8. Why Golden Geese make such tempting targets
  12. Making Sure You Got them Right
    1. Chapter 8. “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends”
      1. “Everybody likes ________.”
      2. Farmers vs. cowmen
      3. The myth of the Average User
      4. The antidote for religious debates
    2. Chapter 9. Usability testing on 10 cents a day
      1. Repeat after me: Focus groups are not usability tests.
      2. Several true things about usability testing
      3. Do-it-yourself usability testing
      4. How often should you test?
      5. How many users do you need?
      6. How do you choose the participants?
      7. How do you find participants?
      8. Where do you test?
      9. Who should do the testing?
      10. Who should observe?
      11. What do you test, and when do you test it?
      12. How do you choose the tasks to test?
      13. What happens during the test?
      14. A sample test session
      15. Typical problems
      16. The debriefing: Deciding what to fix
      17. Alternative lifestyles
      18. Try it, you’ll like it
  13. Larger Concerns and Outside Influences
    1. Chapter 10. Mobile: It’s not just a city in Alabama anymore
      1. What’s the difference?
      2. It’s all about tradeoffs
      3. The tyranny of the itty-bitty living space
      4. Breeding chameleons
      5. Don’t hide your affordances under a bushel
      6. No cursor = no hover = no clue
      7. Flat design: Friend or foe?
      8. You actually can be too rich or too thin
      9. Mobile apps, usability attributes of
      10. Delightful is the new black
      11. Apps need to be learnable
      12. Apps need to be memorable, too
      13. Usability testing on mobile devices
      14. The logistics of mobile testing
      15. My recommendations
      16. Proof of concept: My Brundleyfly camera
      17. Finally...
    2. Chapter 11. Usability as common courtesy
      1. The reservoir of goodwill
      2. Things that diminish goodwill
      3. Things that increase goodwill
    3. Chapter 12. Accessibility and you
      1. What developers and designers hear
      2. What designers and developers fear
      3. The truth is, it can be complicated
      4. The four things you can do right now
      5. #1. Fix the usability problems that confuse everyone
      6. #2. Read an article
      7. #3. Read a book
      8. #4. Go for the low-hanging fruit
    4. Chapter 13. Guide for the perplexed
      1. Ya gotta know the territory
      2. The usual advice
      3. If I were you...
      4. Resist the dark forces
      5. A few definitive answers
  14. Acknowledgments
  15. Index
  16. Also Available

Product information

  • Title: Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 3rd Edition
  • Author(s): Steve Krug
  • Release date: December 2013
  • Publisher(s): New Riders
  • ISBN: 9780133597271