As far as usability books go, there are few that come more recommended than Don’t Make Me Think! Steve Krug’s expanded and revised second edition, published two years ago, is a surprisingly short introduction to usability, but that’s really the point. It defines a few key principles and lessons from which you can begin to learn about usability or refresh your knowledge of it.
Krug starts by laying out why you’d want to read Don’t Make Me Think! and what it will and won’t contain. It’s a smart introduction to a book which is not just aimed at designers, but manager and executives as well. He then proceeds to outline the book’s central principle: “Don’t make me think!” It’s a remarkably simple rule, but you’d be amazed how many websites and interfaces forget to spell out the obvious.
Don’t Make Me Think! goes on to explain how people really use the Web; not by reading everything and making logical decisions, but by scanning and muddling through. Krug focuses on a great little fact; we don’t make optimal choices; we satisfice (a neat portmanteau of satisfying and sufficing). People choose the first reasonable option, not the best one.
The book moves on to visual hierarchies, choice, writing for the Web and an extensive section on graphical cues and conventions. Krug touches on a few business issues too, including homepage design and how to safely navigate making design decisions in a team. He introduces more formal usability testing, then moves on to accessibility and a brief introduction to cascading style sheets.
What makes Don’t Make Me Think! so easy to recommend is not just the balanced choice of topics, but also Krug’s writing style. He explains issues and suggests guidelines in plain English that everyone can understand. The book is also in full colour with plenty of illustrations, so you know exactly what he’s talking about.
Looking at the cover, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a one principle book that revolves around a few anecdotes and a handful of buzzwords, but it’s the complete opposite. Don’t Make Me Think! is an essential read for anyone remotely interested in the subjectand a great title to having lying around as reference. If I could only have one book on usability, this would be it.
Published in Book reviews, Usability on 9th August 2008. No comments.
Designing forms for the web is a tricky business. Left-aligned labels or right-aligned labels? What about putting them above or using none at all? Tool tips or more substantial help text? Thankfully, Yahoo design chief Luke Wroblewski is here to help.
Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks is sadly not available in the UK, so if you really want to buy it, you’ll have to either download the digital copy or have it shipped from America (although it comes with the PDF version if you order a hard copy). I think it’s a shame because it would probably do well enough to justify its presence over here, but I guess that’s the cost of going with a smaller publisher.
Wroblewski begins by outlining the problem: “Forms suck. We should design accordingly.” He introduces the basic benefits of good form design and then moves on to cover every aspect of web form design in the clearly delineated chapters that follow.
Although there’s a lot to take in, Wroblewski writes very clearly and the full colour book is full of illustrations. Best of all, each chapter ends with a short list of best practices, so you don’t have to read through an entire section again when you use it as reference. Web Form Design also includes a number of contributions by other authors, labelled as ‘Perspectives’ in the book. These are well placed and offer additional context to the main text.
With the higher price due to shipping, my expectations were somewhat higher than usual for Web Form Design, but it’s more than justified the price I paid for it. It’s a very specialist book, but one that will probably stand the test of time better than a lot of other technical books. For anyone who designs web forms on a reasonably frequent basis, this is an essential read.
Published in Book reviews, Usability, Websites, tagged forms on 2nd August 2008. No comments.
Nectar is a loyalty card scheme which I recently signed up for because you can earn points at the supermarket I use. It’s a pretty large scheme, so I was surprised to discover just how poor the Nectar website’s usability is. Let’s walk through the task of signing up for a Nectar card, having heard about the scheme in store.
So, load Nectar.com and you’ll immediately notice two things that are conspicuous by their absence. First of all, only the browser’s title bar tells you what Nectar is, a place that most people won’t look to assertain the meaning of a website. It mentions points and there are some offers, but it lacks a definitive statement of intent.
Aside from assuming knowledge of the product, Nectar’s homepage also contains no obvious link to a place where you can get a card. Going from potential customer to an actual customer should be an easy process. There’s a small ‘Register’ link in the top right corner and a couple of pointers hidden in the menus, but these are probably too little, too late for less determined users.
Continue reading →
Published in Usability, Websites, tagged forms on 28th June 2008. No comments.
I’m a fairly frequent user of Amazon’s Wish List feature, but its usability is far from ideal. It may be okay if you don’t access it too often, but I use it to store a list of books and other items that I intend to buy sometime, but not right now. Here are two really simple ways in which they could improve the usability of Wish Lists:
Don’t make me hover over a link or click twice to access my Wish List. The site’s redesign makes you do this, even though there’s plenty of space in the interface for a simple link.
Before the redesign:
After the redesign:
Allow me to save the default sort order of the Wish List. I assign a priority to each item, but whenever I load the page, it sorts items by date.
Ideally, I should be able to click on “Wish Lists” and then see my list sorted by priority. Instead, I have to click the “Gifts & Wish Lists” drop down menu, then on “Wish Lists”, then “Sort by”, then “Priority (high to low)”, then “GO!”. Amazon make you click five times more than is necessary, but they could improve the usability of Wish Lists by altering two simple parts of their design.
Published in Usability, Websites on 16th June 2008. No comments.
Gamespot has some nerve. I went to read their GTA IV review, only to be shown this:
It goes without saying that GameSpot is a big website, but they obviously have no idea about design or usability. Pop up windows are now universally despised because they interrupt the user experience. They should never be used unless the user is expecting them to appear.
Any content that is going to automatically pop up in a new window when you load a page is not worth reading. It’s as simple as that. Even worse is that you’re not told what you “may” be missing out on. It could be anything, but one thing is for sure; no-one is going to bother to find out.
This is such an elementary error that I almost have pity for GameSpot. Their site isn’t exactly well designed to begin with, but this is a total shambles.
Published in Usability, Websites, tagged GameSpot on 1st May 2008. No comments.
In a world with countless choices, presenting people with relevant information should be one of the most important aspirations for any designer. This can be achieved on the web and in software in a number of ways, but let’s begin with a more mundane example. Many shoe shops organise their displays by type - hiking shoes here, trainers there, heels that way - but this is a fundamental mistake.
When I walk into a shoe shop, I may or may not know what type of footwear that I’m after, but one thing I know for sure is my size. Organising shoes by type might be more aesthetically pleasing, but in practice all people need to be presented with are shoes that actually fit them. Grouping shoes by design is natural because our minds like to associate things that look the same, but in fact the most logical way is to organise shoes based on the single criteria that the customer will almost definitely know.
This idea translates directly on to the web. T-shirt site Threadless has a stock chart page whose title is “Tell us your size, we’ll tell you what’s in stock! Fo REAL!” Once you know your size, you can quickly view a selection of shirts which are only relevant to you. Rival site Busted Tees doesn’t have this option and suffers for it, only alerting you to a lack of stock once you get to a product page.
Another good example of using the correct criteria to organise products is IKEA. They first present you items for each room, then later give you the option of seeing similar products. When you walk into a store, you go through model bedrooms, kitchens and so on, then only later are shown all of the beds, lights and tables together. The idea behind this is that the one thing that the customer knows is what rooms they have. They may arrive looking for a table, but you can be certain that they know where they’re going to put it.
So the next time you visit somewhere that presents you with choices or design something that does the same, think for a second what your most basic criteria is. The best methods of organisation are not necessarily the most obvious ones.
Published in Design, Usability, tagged IKEA, organisation, relevance, Threadless on 21st February 2008. No comments.
