Review on Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think"

I honestly read Steve Krug's book through, because it was more attractive with less text and more images to make things clear to the core point for a user, or in this case, a book reader. The approach of designing the book is similar to the described content - in order to make it readable, it has been made concise, packed with illustrative pictures, and "scannable", as people nowadays mind reading books full of dull text. It can be compared with a usable web page described in the book. The author adds that the reader should not know everything to get the picture, this is why he has kept the content as concise as it is.
The other good thing about the book is that Krug also suggests better solutions for the existing flaws on web pages as well as possible scenarios and outcomes for different problems, making the book a true handbook for all kinds of web page makers.

Many parts of the book came to me as familiar from Hypertext and Interface and Interaction Design lectures. I think the lecturer has used parts of it in his talks. I think that this book is very interensting and easy to read and the author gives precise instructions on how to create a web page efficiently so that the user would navigate better and with less effort on it.

The book starts with guiding principles and moves on to navigation principles. Then the author talks about usability and user testing, finalizing the book with most common problems that might come up and how to fix them. He provides sample dialogues, images, and tables in order to summarize the topics. The author also brings up some of the accessibility problems that might come up. I am not going to retell the contents of the book, but I will point out a few notes that I took:

• the user should not think while he or she browses the web in order to grasp the site quickly
• the less the user thinks, the more efficient the page is, it is necessary to remove "noise"
• users scan only certain words that they think is necessary for them, they do not read the whole content
• help is not necessary, because users do not use it, they try to get through the page themselves, the same goes for introductions, not much "happy talk" needed there
• organize parts in a clear way
• keep pace with known web page conventions, make obvious what is clickable
• remove unnecessary words, make choices clear to the user
• a good road map will be necessary in the form of "breadcrumbs" or a good menu so that the user could not get lost
• bookmarks are necessary because they show you a large chunk of the menu and they should be visible
• page logo is important, as well as the navigation marker "you are here"
• site home page should note its identity, the hierarchy, and has to have a "search" button as well as the good things that draw people's attention to it.
• the users need to know that they findon the page
• show your own identity on the web page, but make it concise
• testing should be done in the beginning and the more people involved, the better it is. After testing the mistake should be fixed and then tested again

All in all I think the book was a good read and even the points that I took out were familiar to me from various usability lectures as well as hypertext lecture. It was good to align the content with your own real-life examples, and I am glad we have tried these solutions out in our lectures as well.

I would recommend the book to all starting web page creators since it is interesting to read, packed with lots of examples and really catches the reader's attention, just like a really functional home page should do!