40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Great sections on navigation, home page design, usability
What makes this book valuable: - in-depth treatment of navigation design. The sections on tabs and breadcrumbs are especially excellent; - great section on effective home page design. Get this book along with Nielsen's "Homepage Usability", and you're set in this department. - wonderful primer on usability testing. If your web team is small, this could...
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Usability - for Americans
Steve Krug covers many aspects of usability in an accessible, light-hearted and easy to read way.
It must be said, though, that Krug's idea of usability is usability for Americans. He assumes we all come from the same place, speak the same language, use the same language scripts and so on. He dismisses web forms in a couple of sentences and international...
What makes this book valuable: - in-depth treatment of navigation design. The sections on tabs and breadcrumbs are especially excellent; - great section on effective home page design. Get this book along with Nielsen's "Homepage Usability", and you're set in this department. - wonderful primer on usability testing. If your web team is small, this could be all you need to get started with informal user testing. My own experience supports Steve's: you don't have to have Ph.D. in human factors to facilitate fruitful usability tests; - last, but not least, the book is very easy to read due to its witty tone, short paragraphs, and tons of bullets. One thing this book could do better: - make the headings more informative, saving the witticisms for the body copy. This would have made it a quicker at-a-glance reference.
Conclusion: The book scores a perfect 10 with its target audience: the designers, developers, project managers, producers, marketers, and those who "sign the check". Just buy it.
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At last, an author who follows his own advice! This book is short and easy to read (at 200 pages, I read it in a day), but surprisingly deep. The book is peppered with colour screenshots, black and white cartoons and pithy quotes and headings. A pleasure, not a chore, to read.
The basic premise is simple; people don't like hard choices or stopping to think, they just want to get something done. The more self-evident a web site is, the easier it is to use. Implementing it, and being sure you've got it right, is tricky, though. Krug covers site and page layout, navigation design, usability testing on a shoestring as well as a broad and engaging model of how people really use the web.
It doesn't deal with internationalization at all, seems to assume a mostly static site, and offers no real help in getting your idea to the web in the first place, but will help you make good choices along the way. Well worth a read, and probably worth a refresher each time you start a new project to keep you on track.
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In a subject that is often preachy, dry and sometimes event pedantic in style, Krug's approach is a breath of fresh air. The book is entertaining and informative at the same time - it uses lots of illustrations to make its point, and that point is dead simple - Don't Make Me Think! Unfortunately, it is the user that shouldn't have to think - designers, architects, developers and content authors really do need to think hard about how to create websites for the audience. This book goes a long way to helping them. I would recommend this book to anyone involved in website design (and indeed I have!).
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Steve Krug covers many aspects of usability in an accessible, light-hearted and easy to read way.
It must be said, though, that Krug's idea of usability is usability for Americans. He assumes we all come from the same place, speak the same language, use the same language scripts and so on. He dismisses web forms in a couple of sentences and international web site users in even fewer. In terms of international viewers of web sites, some of his advice is downright damaging.
Read this as an introduction to usability, but look further too - otherwise we will never be rid of the scourge of the required "State" field in forms ...
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This is a really refreshing book. Krug analyses web users' surfing habits with uncanny accuracy and points out things that are so obvious, they are so easy to disregard.
For once, this is a book that attempts to analyse great sites with minor flaws, rather than smugly 'putting the boot in' on poorly designed sites as other 'experts' often delight in.
As a Web Manager, this is a book that will be the cornerstone of subsequent projects our team take on.
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I found this book clear, easy to understand, pleasant to read and very useful. Steve Krug approaches the topic from a principles perspective, which means that readers do not need web development knowledge or experience. The text is very easy to read and accompanied in many places by pictorial examples showing what the author is explaining. If you have an interest in your own website or your company's website, even if you're not a techie, then this book is for you. You'll never look at a website the same again.
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Very easy to read but full of useful advice. Every web site owner and web designer needs to read this book. The recommendations could easily add thousands to your bottom line if you're selling on line.
I particularly liked the "fixed" versions of home pages with the description of the "problem areas". All the other points covered were very clearly explained and easy to take on board. Particularly useful sections covering home page design and testing sites for usability.
I bought four books about usability recently and this is easily the best.
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Author honestly points out that his book is not about web application usablity and recommends "Web Application Design Handbook: Best Practices for Web-Based Software" himself. I ordered that book as well but I'm definitely not sorry about getting this one - it's good information for anyone working with web development.
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You have designers on one side, and IT tech heads on the other. Each has their own idea of how to build a web site. But, both don't seem to know the key reason of having a business web site - results.
This book gives the practical advice that anyone involved in trying to create a successful web site needs that isn't biased. The main advice is to give your users the web site that THEY want. Easy to read, very honest advice.
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