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Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems
 
 
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Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems [Kindle Edition]

Steve Krug (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews) |
Digital List Price: £18.23 What's this?
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Product Description

Product Description

It's been known for years that usability testing can dramatically improve products. But with a typical price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 for a usability consultant to conduct each round of tests, it rarely happens.

In this how-to companion to Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own web site, application, or other product. (As he said in Don't Make Me Think, "It's not rocket surgery".)

In this new book, Steve explains how to:
  • Test any design, from a sketch on a napkin to a fully-functioning web site or application
  • Keep your focus on finding the most important problems (because no one has the time or resources to fix them all)
  • Fix the problems that you find, using his "The least you can do" approach
By paring the process of testing and fixing products down to its essentials (A morning a month, that's all we ask ), Rocket Surgery makes it realistic for teams to test early and often, catching problems while it's still easy to fix them. Rocket Surgery Made Easy adds demonstration videos to the proven mix of clear writing, before-and-after examples, witty illustrations, and practical advice that made Don't Make Me Think so popular.

From the Back Cover

It's been known for years that usability testing can dramatically improve products. But with a typical price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 for a usability consultant to conduct each round of tests, it rarely happens.

In this how-to companion to Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own web site, application, or other product. (As he said in Don't Make Me Think, "It's not rocket surgery".)

In this new book, Steve explains how to:
  • Test any design, from a sketch on a napkin to a fully-functioning web site or application
  • Keep your focus on finding the most important problems (because no one has the time or resources to fix them all)
  • Fix the problems that you find, using his "The least you can do" approach
By paring the process of testing and fixing products down to its essentials (A morning a month, that's all we ask ), Rocket Surgery makes it realistic for teams to test early and often, catching problems while it's still easy to fix them. Rocket Surgery Made Easy adds demonstration videos to the proven mix of clear writing, before-and-after examples, witty illustrations, and practical advice that made Don't Make Me Think so popular.

Product details

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Steve Krug
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you want to find and fix usability problems in your web site, the bad news is that finding them on your own is extremely difficult. You'll overlook massive show-stoppers because you know how the site is meant to work.

The good news is that usability testing, getting someone else to use your web site while you watch them, is very easy and extremely informative.

In this short, encouraging book, Steve Krug explains what you have to do in his wonderfully approachable style. In Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, he zeroed on in the really important points about web site usability. In this new book, he's done it again with usability testing. It's boiled down to the essence of an approach that anyone could use, in 'a morning a month'.

Steve does not claim that this is a comprehensive manual for how to do any type of usability test. For that, he includes recommendations for further reading, such as Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests.

Not does he claim that his method is full-on, professional testing. In fact, he says: "If you can afford to hire a usability professional to do your testing for you, do it".

This book is for anyone who wants to make sure that their web site is easy to use, but doesn't have the budget for a professional.

Having said that, I am a usability consultant and I still found it worthwhile to read this book. If you've struggled to get clients to make the changes that you know are necessary, then here's an opportunity to pick up some ideas.

(Disclosure: Steve wrote the foreword to my book Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability (Interactive Technologies))
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having read Don't Make Me Think some time ago, I've been eagerly awaiting this 'how to' book and have had it on pre-order for a while. It was worth the wait. Having read it in a matter of hours I think any website owner, manager, designer or developer would find it an interesting and informative read.

This book explains what you can gain from regular usability testing and shows you step-by-step exactly how to facilitate usability testing and collate the results into an action plan. You don't need a load of fancy, expensive equipment or programming skills and Mr Krug usefully includes all the scripts (narrative not programming) you need to conduct your testing. He also covers how to: conduct debriefing meetings, manage the fixing of problems, get buy-in from stakeholders and potential pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Really all you need to start your own usability testing is this book and the skills to organise a meeting - the book tells you what to do at what time point so it really is a case of following the instructions. I particulalry like the short, to the point chapters and as with Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability the design layout makes it super-easy to use with decent sized type broken down into manageable chunks.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A good introduction 6 Feb 2010
Format:Paperback
A good introduction to interface usability tests. It succeeds in making you understand how this kind of tests, although not necessarily expensive, can dramatically improve user experience suggesting just minor interface tweaks.
The book gives you little more than a general idea, scratching only the surface, but it gives you enough to conduct your own tests, conveys confidence in their usefulness and gives you a list of other sources to expand your knowledge.
The examples are all about web interfaces but the very same principles are easily applied to desktop or mobile applications.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Life saver!
It was my first direct attempt at running usability testing when I got this book. This book made it easy, with useful templates, methods and common sense. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Red
Not for the experts
This is user testing on the cheap for people who work in different areas of web development and who want to improve their work but have a very small budget. Read more
Published 3 months ago by K. Fearon
A must read for any UX pro
It would be hard to come up with any way to give a more entertaining and enlightning and efficient insight to usability testing and how to actually accomplish it in practice. Read more
Published 9 months ago by DrGren
Very centered on user testing
The whole book is focused on how to do usability testing without spending much money.
If you want to know how to do it, this is your book. Definitely! It has everything. Read more
Published on 14 April 2010 by Carlos Santos Canelles
Practical & hands-on approach to discount usability testing
Rocket Surgery Made Easy is simply a great book. It is short, sweet and to the point. However this is discount usability testing at beginner's level. Read more
Published on 5 April 2010 by S. Andersson
Steve Krug has done it again
An increasingly important subject spelled out, easy to understand, easy to adapt. Even programmers can do it!
Published on 24 Mar 2010 by Niels Müller Larsen
almost as good as Volume 1 - 7 that's a complement!
What a hard act to follow - could any book be as succinct and useful as "Don't make me think!"? Unlikely.

This book is however a great progression. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2010 by Big J
Usability tsting made EXTREMELY easy
There's not much to say really. Steve Krug has made user testing even more easy to approach than he did in "Don't make me think". Read more
Published on 19 Mar 2010 by M. Kjeldsen
*The* book for beginners interested in running usabilty sessions
A great companion to Steve's previous book - Don't Make Me Think.
This expands on the 3 chapters in the original edition of DMMT, and then some. Read more
Published on 19 Feb 2010 by usability-ed
excellent book - demystifies in plain language
This is an excellent book, the follow up to his "Don't Make me Think" which gave us several simple benchmarks which we try to adhere to when designing any website. Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2010 by T. Duffin
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Popular Highlights

 (What's this?)
&quote;
Do-it-yourself usability tests are definitely qualitative. The purpose isnt to prove anything; its to get insights that enable you to improve what youre building. &quote;
Highlighted by 82 Kindle users
&quote;
while analytics can tell you in great detail what people are doing on your site, they cant tell you why theyre doing those things. &quote;
Highlighted by 67 Kindle users
&quote;
You test a wireframe by making up tasks, usually all related to navigation: How would you find _____? What would you expect to see when you click on this link? &quote;
Highlighted by 67 Kindle users

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