I have just finished reading Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug. Here are some quotes from the book:
“‘Don’t make me think!’ I’ve been telling people for years that this is my first law of usability. And the more Web pages I look at, the more convinced I became. It’s the overriding principle—the ultimate tie breaker when deciding whether something works or doesn’t in a Web design.” (page 11)
“Faced with the fact that your users are whizzing by, there are five important things you can do to make sure they see—and understand—as much of your site as possible:
- Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page
- Take advantage of conventions
- Break pages up into clearly defined areas
- Make it obvious what’s clickable
- Minimize noise.” (page 31)
“I’ve come to think that what really counts is not the number of clicks it takes me to get to what I want (although there are limits), but rather how hard each click is—the amount of thought required, and the amount of uncertainty about whether I’m making the right choice.” (page 41)
“Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. –Krug’s Third Law of Usability” (page 45)
“The problem is there are no simple ‘right’ answers for most Web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need—carefully thought out, well executed and tested.” (page 128)
“Where debates about what people like waste time and drain the team’s energy, testing tends to defuse arguments and break impasses by moving the discussion away from the realm of what’s right or wrong and into the realm of what works or doesn’t work.” (page 129)
There’s a lot of really simple, but helpful advice in this book. I’d highly recommend it to anyone involved in building web sites.