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Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Second Edition o 2006 Steve Krug New riders 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510/524-2178 800/283-9444 510/524-2221(fax) FindusontheWebatwww.peachpit.com Toreporterrors,pleasesendanotetoerrata@peachpit.com New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson education Editor: karen whitehouse Production editor: lisa brazieal Interior Design and Composition: Allison D. Cecil llustrations by mark Match FarnhamfontsprovidedbyTheFontBureau,Inc.(www.fontbureau.com) Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerptscontactpermissions@peachpit.com Notice of Liability The information in this book is distributed on an"As Is "basis, without warranty While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it Trademarks Throughout this book, trademarks are used Rather than put a trademark symbol in every occurrence of a trademarked name we state that we are using the names in an editorial fashion only and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use or the use of any trade name is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book ISBN C-321-34475-8 Printed and bound in the united states of america [ⅱ FIRST EDITION To my father, who always wanted me to write a book My mother, wbo always made me feel like I could, Melanie who married me-the greatest stroke of good fortune of my life, and my son Harry, wbo will surely write books much better than this one whenever he wants to SECOND EDITION To my big brother, Ph who was a mensch his wbole life CONTENTS PREFACE About the second edition FOREWORD By Roger black INTRODUCtioN Read me first Throat clearing and disclaimers GUIDING PRINCIPLES CHAPTER 1 Don't make me think! 10 Krug 's First Law of usability CHAPTER 2 How we really use the Web 20 Scanning, satisficing, and muddling through ChaPTER 3 Billboard Design 101 30 Designing pages for scanning, not reading CHAPTER 4 Animal. vegetable or mineral? 4 Why users like mindless choices CHAPTER 5 Omit needHesswords 44 The art of not writing for the web THINGS YOU NEED TO GET RIGHT CHAPTER 6 Street signs and Breadcrumbs 50 Designing navigation CONTENTS CHAPTER 7 The first step in recovery is admitting that 94 the Home page is beyond your control Designing the Home page MAKING SURE YOU GOT THEM RIGHT chaPter 8 The farmer and the cowman 122 Should be friends” Why most Web design team arguments about usability are a waste of time, and bow to avoid them CHaPTER 9 Usability testing on 10 cents a day 30 Wby user testing-done simply enough-is the cure for all your site's LARGER CONCERNS AND OUTSIDE INFLUENCES CHAPTEr 10 Usability as common courtesy 160 Why your Web site should be a mensch CHAPTER 11 Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and you 168 Just wben you think you're done, a cat floats by with buttered toast strapped to its back CHAPTER 12 Help! My boss wants me to 180 Wben bad design decisions happen to good people Recommended reading 186 Acknowledgments 92 Index 198 PREFACE About the Second edition Just wben I thought I was out, they pull me back in MICHAEL CORLEONE. IN THE GODFATHER. PART III ince Don' t Make Me Think was first published nearly five years ago, people have been wonderful about the book i get lots of lovely email. You can't imagine how nice it is to start your morning with someone you've never met telling you that they enjoyed something that you did. (I recommend it highly Even nicer is the fact that people seem to like the book for the same reasons i do For instance Many people appreciate the fact that it's short. (Some have told me that they actually read it on a plane ride, which was one of my stated objectives for the first edition; the record for"fastest read"seems to be about two hours a gratifying number of people have said that they liked the book because it practices what it preaches, in the writing and the design Some people said it made them laugh out loud which i really appreciated.(One reader said that I made her laugh so hard that milk came out of her nose. How can something like that help but make you feel that your time has been well spent?) But the most satisfying thing has been people saying that it helped them get their job done better. But what have you done for us lately? It only took about a year after the book appeared for people to start asking me when i was going to do a second edition For a long time, i really resisted the idea. i liked the book the way it was and thought it worked well, and since it was about design principles and not technology, i didn, t think it was likely to be out of date anytime soon [ viil PREFACE Usually I'd pull the consultant/therapist trick of asking them what they would change and the answer was almost always "Well, i guess you could update the examples. " Some people would point out that some of the sites in the examples didnt even exist anymore But the fact is, many of the sites in the book were already gone by the time it hit the bookstores.(Remember, it came out right before the Internet bubble burst. The fact that the sites weren' t around didn' t make the examples any less clear. Other people would say, "Well, you could talk about the things about the Web that have changed. " It's true, some things about the web have changed in the last few years. Some of the changes were good More good sites to copy from Cascading Style Sheets( CSS)that actually work Useful conventions like printer-friendly pages and amazon. com s what's this? Google as the starting point for all actions The swing in business models from banner ads(for things i don't want)to Google ads for things i actually might want) Hardly anyone uses frames anymore and some not so good: Pop-ups Phishing But these changes didn t make me feel a need to update the book, which is about design principles, not specifics of technology or implementation And there was one other problem: i was very proud of how short the book was It took a lot of work, but it was an important part of the "practices what it preaches"business. If i was going to add any new material, I'd have to throw some of the existing stuff overboard, and i thought it all worked pretty well V111 ABOUT THE SECOND EDITION So, what are we doing here? One of the nicest fringe benefits of the book for me is that I've been able to spend time teaching workshops In the workshops, I try to do the same thing i did in the book: show people what I think about when i do a usability review of a Web site And since everyone who comes to the workshops has already read the book naturally i had to come up with different examples to make the same points, and different ways of explaining the same things. I also get to do a lot of reviews of different kinds of sites, because everyone who comes to the workshop can submit a URL, and during the day i do 12-minute "expert mini-reviews "of some of them and a live user test of one or two others and as anyone who's ever taught anything knows, teaching something is the best way to learn more about it So when my publisher started asking about a second edition again last year, I actually thought about what a second edition might be like and while I still felt there wasn't much I'd change or delete from the first edition, i realized i did have some other things i could write about that might be helpfu Like what? The new material mostly falls into three categories >Oh, now i get it. Teaching the workshops has given me many chances to think through what's in the book. There are a few things that I' ve rewritten slightly because i think i understand them a little better now, or i have a better way to explain them. Help! My boss wants me to_ A lot of the questions people ask in my workshops amount to"i know the right thing to do in this case, but my boss/client/ stakeholders insist that i do the wrong thing. How can I convince them otherwise?