A book review? Yeah, sure, kinda. I tend to highlight the crap out of professional books that I read. I rarely go back and look at the highlights so this exercise is as much for me as it is for you.
Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Not yet released. This is the one you want. My only complaint about the 2nd edition, which I read, is that it is awfully dated (I think he uses Netscape in an example or two). If you want to buy, use that link so I get a kickback. I’m not shy about referrals.
Good read. Short enough that it can comfortably consumed on a flight across the country (I did it in two because Candy Crush has got my attention).
Anyway, my takeaways (personal comments or clarification in italics):
- The most important thing you can do is to just understand the basic principle of eliminating question marks.
- For most of us, it doesn’t matter to us whether we understand how things work, as long as we can use them.
- Many designers tend to underestimate just how much value conventions provide.
- Innovate when you know you have a better idea (and everyone you show it to says “Wow!”), but take advantage of conventions when you don’t.
- Making the choices mindless is one of the main things that make a site easy to use.
- The main thing you need to know about instructions is that no one is going to read them.
- The concept of Home pages is so important. Every site needs a landing page of sorts that makes sense of the whole.
- It’s no fun feeling lost. Navigation that is clear and logical is very important.
- If the navigation is doing its job, it tells you implicitly where to begin and what your options are.
- Every page needs a name.
- The name needs to match what I clicked.
- The most common failing of “You are here” indicators is that they’re too subtle.
- Search. Every site needs it regardless of whether or not it makes absolute sense. Everybody finds things in different ways, and many are wired to look for a search field by default. It doesn’t need to be anything grand; a simple text search of your site will suffice in many cases. No need to make it keyword driven, which adds to maintenance.
- Designing a Home page inevitably involves compromise.
- Don’t confuse a tagline with a motto.
- All Web users are unique, and all Web use is basically idiosyncratic.
- Testing one user is 100 percent better than testing none. In reference to usability testing.
- The best-kept secret of usability testing is the extent to which it doesn’t much matter who you test.
- In general, if the user’s second guess about where to find things is always right, that’s good enough.
- I [as a user] should never have to think about formatting data.
- Ignore all comments that users make about colors during a user test, unless three out of four people use a word like “puke” to describe the color scheme.
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