Anahlia Nguyen

“Don’t Make Me Think” Book Review

“Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” by Steve Krug is a very insightful book, in which Krug emphasizes the importance of making websites easy and effortless for users to navigate. Krug speaks for designs to be simple, clear, and concise and he emphasizes the significance of eliminating unnecessary complexity.  Krug’s central idea is that users should not put effort into figuring out websites, instead, designers put in the effort through various methods into the design for users to have an effortless and enjoyable experience. 

Some of the things that stood out to me the most is his focus on simplicity. He stated that it was important to only include elements that directly align with the user’s goals. Additionally, he emphasized on removing complex elements and clutter in order to make user’s interactions more efficient. Another point that stood out to me is when he stated that users scan the website, not read it. This opened up my eyes, and I realized that in order for user’s to pay attention to the content, we as designers are in charge of presenting the content in a way that is easy to scan such as making clear heading, bulleted lists, and concise paragraphs, similarly to how he presented the information at the end of every chapter. Another focus of the book was intuitive navigation. He advocates for consistent navigation patterns and visual cues in order for users to know exactly what they’re doing and what they’re looking for. Most importantly, he talks about the need to has a user-centric design. It is important for designers to prioritize the needs of users and their preferences by conducting various usability testing in order to gather feedback that caters to the needs of the user. And lastly, he emphasized the importance of having responsive layouts for various screens. He states how we need to design a consistent experience for users across all platforms. 

With all these points in mind, it made me reflect on myself as a designer. While reading the book I realized that it doesn’t have to be complicated or brand new. As a designer, we don’t have to invent revolutionary designs every time we are working on a project. I felt a sense of relief knowing that what is best for users is to keep it simple and similar to what already exists in order to make the experience consistent and clean for the user. I also reflected on not only being able to communicate with users, but to communicate with everyone part of the design process whether it is developers, the project leader, or even the marketing team which is something I have been neglecting to think about as well. 

The book is easy to read and comprehend. He uses methods such as writing in a conversational tone in order for readers to easily understand the concepts. For example, he writes, “People don’t read Web pages, they scan them” (Chapter 2). He garners a conversational tone with the reader to convey his idea in a simple manner. He also includes a lot of visuals in the book to describe or give context as to what he is explaining. Krug also uses anecdotes to convey his idea to the reader. In chapter 2, he uses an example of a billboard stating, “Google’s home page is so spare that it makes the Yahoo! homepage look like a Las Vegas billboard” (Chapter 2). This was to emphasize the idea of the importance of simplicity in a design. And lastly, at the end of every chapter he provides a checklist that summarizes key points of the chapter and advice designers should take away from every chapter. With these methods, Krug made the book easy to read and easy for me to understand the information he was conveying in the book. 

While reading the book, I found it to be very insightful and a resource I should look back on for the rest of my career. Krug presented the information along with visuals in order to support what he was describing. It was an interesting read and I would definitely recommend this book.