[...]... look! Somebody brought donuts Sometimes we work by phone… …and sometimes in person > They pay me Being a consultant, I get to work on interesting projects with a lot of nice, smart people, and when we’re finished, the sites are better than when we started I get to work at home most of the time and I don’t have to sit in mind-numbing meetings every day or deal with office politics I get to say what I think, ... you to think about your own experience as a Web user while you’re reading—something most of us tend to forget when we’ve got our Web design hats on This has led to the following use of pronouns in this book: > “I” is me, the author Sometimes it’s me the usability professional (“I tell my clients ”) and sometimes it’s me speaking as a Web user (“If I can’t find a Search button ”), but it’s always me >... I’ve seen: If something is hard to use, I just don’t use it as much I hope this book will help you build a better site and—if you can skip a few design arguments—maybe even get home in time for dinner once in a while [9] 1 234567 c h a pt e r Don’t make me think! krug’s first law of usability Michael, why are the drapes open? —kay corleone in the godfather, part ii P eople often ask me: “What’s the... same thing Are they really? Can I click on that? When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks [ 13 ] c h a pt e r 1 Things that make us think All kinds of things on a Web page can make us stop and think unnecessarily Take names of things, for example Typical culprits are cute or clever names, marketinginduced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names... contributions I make to each project always come from keeping just a few key usability principles in mind I think there’s a lot more leverage for most people in understanding these principles than in another laundry list of specific do’s and don’ts I’ve tried to boil down the few things I think everybody involved in building Web sites should know Not present at time of photo Just so you don’t waste your time looking... discussion board and asked readers of the first edition to tell me what I could leave out And fortunately, the testing did what user testing always does: > Confirmed some things I already knew > Taught me some things I didn’t know about how people were using the book, and what they valued about it > Whacked me over the head with a big surprise that let me improve it significantly The big surprise was the large... isn’t your life’s work, and you don’t have time for a long book Tagline Welcome blurb > You don’t need to know everything As with any field, there’s a lot you could learn about usability But unless you’re a usability professional, there’s a limit to how much is useful to learn.7 6 There’s a good usability principle right there: if something requires a large investment of time—or looks like it will—it’s... Stanwick [ xi ] Foreword > don’t make me think again C onsidering how much has changed since 2000, when the first edition of this book was printed, it’s amazing that the basic design of the Web has stayed so much the same In the early years the platform was volatile It seemed like features changed every week We had the browser wars, with Netscape squaring off against all comers and the WC3 bringing... head somewhere else This is sometimes true, but you’d be surprised at how long some people will tough it out at sites that frustrate them Many people who encounter problems with a site tend to blame themselves and not the site 3 The actual Average User is kept in a hermetically sealed vault at the International Bureau of Standards in Geneva We’ll get around to talking about the best way to think about... And that’s a _ And there’s the thing that I want.” NOT THINKING OK This looks like the product categories and these are today’s special deals Memory, Modems There it is: Monitors Click [ 12 ] d o n’ t m a k e m e t h i n k ! But when I’m looking at a page that makes me think, all the thought balloons over my head have question marks in them THINKING Hmm Pretty busy Where should I start? Is that the . y0 w0 h1" alt="" Don’t Make Me Think! a common sense approach to web usability SECOND EDITION Steve Krug New Riders Publishing Berkeley, California USA Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense. a mensch his whole life. [ iii ] [ iv ] PREFACE About the Second Edition vi FOREWORD By Roger Black xii INTRODUCTION Read me first 2 Throat clearing and disclaimers CHAPTER 1 Don’t make me think! . 94 the Home page is beyond your control Designing the Home page CHAPTER 8 “The Farmer and the Cowman 122 Should Be Friends” Why most Web design team arguments about usability are a waste of time,