Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug

“Don’t make me think” reinforces the point that when web site makes you stop and think about what you’re doing, it is making your life more complicated, and chances are isn’t designed to get the most out of it.

Generally speaking, no one usually wants to carry a heavier load than is necessary. That could mean overloading your cart at a supermarket or trying to download too many files at once from your computer. So why should we do this to our brain? Things that stop and make you think add to your brain’s workload, which really drives the point home that being clear in what we want to articulate. A clearer message prevents people from getting lost and feeling unsure on how to react.

I have really found this to be true in my own experience. I regularly look up sites related to sports and news. I have a game plan on what I want to find and sort of have a list of sites that I routinely go to ESPN in order to get up to date on the latest breaking news.

Steve Krug offers some food for thought on how people use the web. Krug points out most people don’t read a web page in it’s entirety, but skim it for the first thing that looks appealing, and then follow the link they were attracted to. He adds people really don’t mess around trying to get an in-depth feel of a web site. I will again use my example of ESPN. Usually ESPN has a featured story that they have a video to, I'll usually play the video and follow the various links they send me to.

Krug really tried to emphasize the importance of designing your website for scanning, not reading. He gave tips on how to make your site friendlier to the eye like clearly defining portions of a page and what is clickable and not "clickable." I really think ESPN does a good job of this. They list the stories they have in short headlines that give you the story and the option of pointing and clicking to get more detail about stories that interest you. 

He also urged to keep writing for the web brief and make the page easy to navigate.  Page names are important and should match what you click to get there. Tabs should be your best friends of navigating because they are hard to miss and well, make the site look more legit.

Krug spoke about a method he liked to use called the “trunk test.” He explained as if you’ve been blindfolded and locked in a car truck, you should still be able to answer certain questions about a site immediately once your blindfold is taken off. These questions include: What site is it? What page am I on? What major sections does this site have? Where can I go from here? Where am I in relation to the rest of the site? Where can I go to search?

I can answer all of the "trunk test" questions. The site is ESPN. I'm on the home page. The site is divided by all of the sports stories of the day or by each individual sport. You can find headlines of stories that grab your attention and follow them to other mediums. The search bar is located in the top right hand corner of the page.

You can’t navigate with an effective home page. They should allow you how to get what you want from the site and to sort of push you to things that you really didn’t intend to find once you found the site. Home pages should include taglines and welcome blurbs in order to get the person to avoid going back to their search engine.

Krug was also devoted to get his message a cross with a list of “Do’s” and “Don’ts.” Like telling people what they want to do and making the site as user friendly. Some of the don’ts where to not hiding information potential users wanted to find and don’t get too bent out of shape with fancy features, which serve mainly as distracters.

I found the book to be very helpful and guide I intend to use and share with some of my friends. Its to the point, filled with useful info, and pictures which add to Krug’s delivery.