Don’t make me think

Don’t Make Me Think
Designing Effective Websites
Jason White

Usability: A person of average (or even below
average) ability and experience can figure out how
to use the thing to accomplish something without it
being more trouble than it is worth.
o Basic principle to Eliminate question marks
o Limit a person’s thinking by keeping everything no more than 2 clicks
away
o My Impression to this idea is that we all have shiny object syndrome
when looking at websites. If something draws your attention from the
goal of the site, or causes you to have to pause to complete a task, the
site designer did not take usability into consideration.

The Design of Everyday Things
• Make it obvious what is clickable: “Don Norman explains
so enjoyably in his recently updated usability classic The
Design of Everyday Things, we’re constantly parsing our
environment (like the handles on doors) for these clues
(to decide whether to pull or push).”
• I was excited for this quote to show up in the
book as I found the example so true. I have
started looking closer at doors to see were the
handles are and which way they swing open.

Design Ideas
o Take advantage of conventions: Using existing
widely used or standardized design patterns.
o Create visual hierarchies: Good visual
hierarchies make it easier for a viewer to find
the important information on a website by
creating priority and emphasis on content to
limit processing time.
o Break pages into clearly defined areas: “Eye-
tracking studies of Web page scanning suggest
that users decide very quickly in their initial
glances which parts of the page are likely to
have useful information and then rarely look at
the other parts.”

Design Ideas
o Eliminate distractions: Visual noise is
the enemy
 3 types of noise: Shouting,
Disorganization, Clutter
o Format content for scanning:
 Use plenty of headings
 Keep paragraphs short
 Use bulleted lists
 Highlight key terms

Mindless Choices
o Links need to be clearly labeled so they create an
unambiguously identified target for the user to reach their
goal.
o User Guidance
 Brief: The smallest amount of information that will help me
 Timely: Placed so I encounter it exactly when I need it
 Unavoidable: Formatted in a way that ensures that I’ll notice
it
When I saw the design ideas and mindless choices topics I
couldn’t help but identify with them. I have the attention
span of a fly and get distracted very easily. If a site has to
many decisions to make, or is not clear about how to use
it, I tend to leave the site and not return.

Omission of needless words
o Reduction of noise, Promoting of useful content,
Short pages to allow the page to be seen without
scrolling
o “Your objective should always be to eliminate
instructions entirely by making everything self-
explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When
instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back
to the bare minimum.”
o Clear, simple and persistent navigation: Use of these
reduce the likelihood that a user will get frustrated
with your site and not return to it

o Persistent Navigation:
 Site Id
 Sections
 Utilities
 Home Button
o Tabs can be important as they are self evident, hard
to miss and slick
o Well designed page:
 What site is this? (Site ID)
 What page am I on? (Page name)
 What are the major sections of this site? (Sections)
 What are my options at this level? (Local navigation)
 Where am I in the scheme of things? (“You are here”
indicators)
 How can I search?

o Street Signs
 Every page needs a name
 Page name at top of page
o Bread crumbs
 Should be at top of the page
 “>” should separate each level of the path
 Use bold typeface to show current location
The idea of bread crumbs is one of my biggest pet peeves
when it comes to website design. I like to know how I got
to a page on a site, and if I want to go back to a different
specific page I like to have that option. When sites do not
include the path of the site, it causes a user to have to go
back to the homepage and start over.

Usability Testing
o Usability tests not focus group
o Test early, test often; cheaper in the long
run
This topic is the one that I have
personally seen cost web designers a
good deal of time and money. If you just
design a site without testing its
usability, you could run into issues that
cause extra work, or even a complete
site redesign.

Designing for Mobile Devices
o Create a mobile version of your site
 Allow zooming
 Provide link to the full site
 Hiding of affordances is a no-no
 Make your links go to the designated location
not to the homepage
 No cursor=no hover=no clue
 Be learnable and memorable
o Test usability on mobile

Brain Rules
At first I was trying to find a link from Brain Rules to Don’t Make Me Think and
couldn’t find one. Then I stopped and realized there were so many ways to link the
topics in Brain Rules to this book. Attention, memory, vision and sensory
integration are the ones that stuck out most to me. The noise that Krug talks about
eliminating affects our senses through out vision. The distractions that come from
disorganization, clutter, and overstimulation can cause our attention to move away
from the website we are on and ruin the experience. To finish this off we always
remember a bad website and try to avoid that site at all costs.

Don’t make me think

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Don’t make me think