Don't make me think!
30 Jul 2019 9 minute read edit
I’m away on holiday, and decided to pickup a copy of the highly rated Don’t make me think: A common sense approach to web and mobile usablity by Steve Krug. UX is something that I have negleted over the last few years, so I’ve decided to dive deep into it!
Chapter 1 - Don’t make me think!
- Don’t make the user think
- Don’t let user waste milliseconds trying to figure something out that’s not obvious
- Users don’t like to puzzle over how to do things
- Users when doing an activity, there is lots of mental chatter and questions that arise e.g.
- Users should never be asking themselves
- where am I
- where should I begin
- where did they put X
- what are the most important things on this page
- why did they call it that
- is that an ad or part of the site
- Users should never be asking themselves
- Your job is to reduce the chatter and questions that come up, as these will lead to errors
- If you can’t make something self-evident, make it self-explanatory
- Using a site that doesn’t make you think about unimportant things feels effortless
- Puzzling over things that are not important saps energy and enthusiasm and time
Chapter 2 - How we really use the web
- Users don’t read, they scan most of the time
- Don’t expect them to read your carefully crafted text
- Users satisfice (users pick the first reasonable option, not the best option)
- Why do web users not look for the best choice?
- Time: optimising is hard, satisficing is more efficient
- Low consequences: if you get it wrong, you can click back
- No value guarantee: in poorly designed sites, spending more time does not mean we will make a better choice
- Fun: there is an eleement of chance, which might be quick and pleasantly surprising
- Why do web users not look for the best choice?
- Most don’t know how things work, they muddle through things - you use something every day, but do you really know how it works, or just muddle through it and make plausible explanations
- we do this as its not important
- we stick to something that it works, but unlikely to look for a better way
- we don’t want users to muddle through things, we want them to feel in control
- its more efficient
- more power to user
- they’ll feel smarter, so more likely to come back
Chapter 3 - Billboard Design 101
- Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t
- Don’t try and reinvent the wheel unless
- Its so clear and self-explanatory that there is no learning curve
- Adds so much value that its worth a small learning curve
- Don’t try and reinvent the wheel unless
- You should still try and be creative and innovative and add as much aesthetic appeal as you can, just make sure its usable
- Clarity thumps consistency - if you can make something significantly clearer at the expense of a bit of consistency, do it
- Optimise for scanning, use hierarchies effectively, sizes, fonts, sections to sort and group content
- Use plenty of headings - make sure size/thickness is different for sub headings and have more space above a heading than below to seperate content
- Keep paragraphs short - even single sentence paragraphs are fine!
- Use bulleted lists - almost anything that can be bulleted, should be. Add a little bit of space between each point to make it clearer
- Highlight key terms - scanning consists of looking for key words/phrases. Bold most important, but not too many or less effective
- Make it obvious what is clickable
- Keep the noise down
- Shouting - not everything can be important, you have to be discliplined.
- Disorganization - if the page looks like a ransacked room, then designer doesn’t understand importance of structure
- Clutter - too much stuff. Low signal to noise ratio - lots of noise, little information.
- assume everything is visual noise, and remove anything that’s not making a real contribution
Chapter 4 - Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral
- Rule of thumb on number of clicks is 3 mindless == 1 thought click
- Choices can be difficult, when they are provide information that is:
- Brief - minimun viable information
- Timely - well placed - exactly when needed
- Unavoidable - formatted in a way ensuing its noticed
- E.g. crossing that has ‘look right for traffic’ markings
Chapter 5 - Omit needless words
- 1/2 words on most webpages are redundant and therefore can be removed without losing meaning
- Once removed half - remove the rest!
- The point here is that you should be ruthless as it
- Reduces noise levels
- Makes the useful content more prominent
- Shorter pages, more content per screen
- The point here is that you should be ruthless as it
- Avoid happy talk
- When you read the start of the article and it provides no information except for telling you how great they are, rather than explaining what makes them great
- Its small talk, most web users just want to get to the point
- Its fine on home page, but don’t let it leak everywhere
- Avoid instructions - no one reads them. You should make it self explanatory
- A survey with instructions - no one will read it if its long, make it short
Chapter 6 - Street signs and Breadcrumbs
- People won’t use your website if they can’t find their way around it
- Problem with web is that there is no sense of scale, direction or location (unlike physical environments)
- Navigation must be good to compensate for this as it
- Tell us what’s there - visible hierarchy tells us what the site contains & navigation reveals content.
- How to use the site - when done well, you know where to begin and your options
- Gives us confidence in the people who built it - clear and well-thought-out navigation is one of best opportunities a site has to create a good impression
- Maintain consistent navigation on all pages, except for forms/checkouts, where its noise. Strimmed down version with just a home button is enough
- Don’t neglect secondary or tertiary navigation
- Primary is most important, but you shouldn’t go ad-hoc for the next few levels. They need same attention to detail
- Page names are important!
- Every page needs a prominent name and it needs to be in the right place matching what the user clicked - a URL is not enough
- Mark where you are - ‘you are here’ - mark the links to show what page the user is navigating
- Make it obvious, don’t try to be clever as users don’t have time
- Breadcrumbs are useful in larger sites, just make sure
- they’re at the top
- use ‘>’ between levels
- boldface the last item
- Tabs are underrated, use them as they’re easy and tried and tested.
- ‘Trunck’ test - on any page, you should be able to answer below as quickly as possible:
- Site ID
- Page name
- Sections
- Local navigation
- “You’re here” indicators
- Search