Book Review Don't Make Me Think

 

A Common Sense Approach to Web and Mobile Usability

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genere Philosophy, Management

Author Steve Krug 

Pages  220

Year of Publish 1st publication 2000, 2nd publication, 3rd publication 2015

Table of contents

 1 Don’t make me think! Krug’s First Law of Usability

 2 How we really use the Web  Scanning, satisfying, and muddling through

 3 Billboard Design Designing pages for scanning, not reading

 4 Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Why users like mindless choices

 5 Omit needless words The art of not writing for the Web

 6 Street signs and Breadcrumbs Designing navigation

 7 The first step in recovery is admitting that  the Home page is beyond your  control Designing the Home page.

8 “The Farmer and the Cowman  Should Be Friends” Why most Web design team arguments about usability are a waste oftime, and how to avoid them

 9 Usability testing on 10 cents a day Why user testing—done simply enough—is the cure for all your site’s ills

 10 Usability as common courtesy Why your Web site should be a mensch

 11 Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and you Just when you think you’re done, a cat floats by with buttered toast strapped to its back

 12 Help! My boss wants me to When bad design decisions happen to good people

Book Review Don't Make Me Think

I can consider Don't Make Me Think as one my favorite books on UX design for web and mobile usability. This is my third book in product management series after Hooked & Made to Stick

It discusses  the patterns that make sense when you're designing websites and applications. Readers might think that a book that was originally written way back in 2000 would no longer be applicable. But it's actually the complete opposite it is completely relevant for you right now because Don't Make me Think has this common-sense approach to usability. 

User experience is not about trends but it's about foundational truths and the way that users interacts with new products, be it real or virtual.

This book is filled with just amazing concise colorful chapters with diagrams. What I really love about the book is it's not written like a textbook with jargon  that readers struggle to comprehend but written for the common person. Author covers some basic principles of user experience designs , he talks about why users make choices that they make. I'm talking about how to do user testing like on a strict budget and actually have it be effective, what is web accessibility,  all of those things that that when you're just designing something that looks good you don't understand.

I feel like laughter helps in learning. The author understand this and applied this philosophy smartly.
If you just sit down in one evening you can cover this entire book.  I would recommend readers to read first it and then taking notes.  I think that there are some chapters where author repeats himself but I think that's for a good reason. I think that those are the more important points and so I don't think you should skip over them who is this book for.
I think that this book is for people who are new to design.  In general, if you want to make websites and you want to make applications and you're  really interested in visual design or your work in product management, then the philosophy discussed in the book will make lot of sense.
Even if readers are not designing websites or if you're designing cloths, there's still things you can learn from this book and I think that if you want to be a digital designer this  is a must read for you highly recommended that's don't make me think by Steve Krug.

Quotes from Don't Make Me Think

• “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.”
• “If there's one thing you learn by working on a lot of different Web sites, it's that almost any design idea--no matter how appallingly bad--can be made usable in the right circumstances, with enough effort.”
• “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”
• “Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back to a bare minimum.”
• “If you want a great site, you’ve got to test. After you’ve worked on a site for even a few weeks, you can’t see it freshly anymore. You know too much. The only way to find out if it really works is to test it.”
• “Happy talk must die”
• “If you can’t make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.”
• “Keep it simple, so you'll keep doing it.”
• “Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away”
• “If something requires a large investment of time—or looks like it will—it’s less likely to be used.”
• “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. —KRUG’S SECOND LAW OF USABILITY”
• “How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people’s lives just by doing our job a little better?”
• “The name of the page will match the words I clicked to get there. In”

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