Rating: 
Summary: Great sections on navigation, home page design, & usability
Review: What makes this book valuable:
- in-depth treatment of navigation design. The sections on tabs and breadcrumbs are 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:
- have more informative headings, saving "the liberal doses of wit" for the body copy. This would have made it a better reference. Conclusion:
The book scores a perfect 10 with its target audience: the designers, developers, project managers, producers, marketers, business owners, and those who "sign the check". However, if you are a seasoned designer looking for a little more in-depth treatment of interface design topics check out either my own book at paulgokin dot com or Eric Eaton's "Designing Web site Interactive Elements."
Rating: 
Summary: Buy it, but take chapters 9 and 10 with a helping of salt...
Review:
If you are looking for an accessible introduction to the topic of web usability, Steve Krug’s straightforward, humorous approach will fit the bill. Don’t Make Me Think! is a lively overview of usability principles for the WWW, filled with clear illustrations and real-world examples from familiar e-commerce sites such as Amazon, Gap.com and Quicken.com. At less than 200 pages, this book is a quick read written in a direct, approachable conversational style rather than in dry academic terms or complicated technical jargon. Despite its brevity and breezy style, Krug manages to cram it full of critical insights into the psychology of Web users. However, in my opinion he does his readers a disservice by downplaying the importance of user characteristics, especially with regard to usability testing. While I agree with Krug’s assertion that users of mass market e-commerce sites will vary widely in their likes, dislikes, motivations and preferred navigation styles, this does not negate the need for careful selection of usability test participants. Krug suggests "grabbing some people" at random for testing, but this approach may backfire if the participants do not share the navigation style or goals of the critical user bases for the site under development. While his suggested approach to testing and recruitment may be cost effective for testing navigation structure or familiar transactions such as a shopping cart application and is certainly better than performing no testing at all, it may have expensive consequences for the design of complex, high risk web applications – especially within the environment of a corporate intranet. Here’s an example: let’s say you were designing a web based application for a high-use call center that required users to look up complex information while speaking to your customers on the phone. Your call center is located in the Midwest, but your developers work in your corporate headquarters in Northern California. Since the developers have no call center experience, and little understanding of the relative importance of various parts of the application, and since they consider the Midwest call center personnel to be relatively unskilled computer users, they decide to create an easy to learn mouse-driven interface requiring several clicks to move between screens. Using Krug’s approach to usability testing, the developers go down the hall and recruit a few web-savvy colleagues to “test” the interface. Sure enough, the designers and developers participating in the test are able to complete particular tasks, and the usability test is declared successful. But when the application is launched, the call center experiences a slowdown in workflow because critical screens are difficult to reach, and the increased reliance on using a mouse for navigation results in an increase in repetitive stress injuries. Both issues result in increased costs to your company, and furthermore, your customer satisfaction ratings plummet as a result of the slowdowns in the phone queue! When participants in a usability test are not representative of the end users of a web driven application, important aspects of its usability, such as the context and frequency of use, are likely to be overlooked. Additionally, the view of the users held by the developers of a system may be flawed, and those misperceptions can have disastrous results for the usability of your web site. Despite Krug’s assertion that “it doesn’t matter who you test”, our experience has shown that including representative users in the testing of high impact, high cost web applications provides an important reality check in the development process. Despite these shortcomings, the readability of Don’t Make Me Think! makes it a valuable book, especially for those new to the idea of designing usable web sites or who need convincing that usability testing is an important part of the design process. If you are having difficulty getting the decision makers or developers in your organization to understand why usability is important, I recommend giving them a copy of this book and suggesting they read it on their next plane trip....
Rating:
Summary: Happy talk must DIE!
Review: I work for a small business that constantly redesigns our websites because management, marketing and development can't decide on a single aspect of our website. Everyone thinks their own ideas are the fruit of eden so all we do is talk in circles for hours on end. I found this book very helpful (especially with the political problems within my company) because it cuts out the "I think blah blah is best because I'm the coolest person in the world and my opinions are better than yours" and gets you focused on "this is what works best because it actually works for real people". This book can give you actual support behind your opinions in a meeting about a website because everything is based on usability. Web navigation, layout, instructions and concise content are a few examples of topics covered. My favorite quote of the book is: "Happy talk must die." I absolutely worship this short section of the book in which Steve Krug explains how happy balk is like a voice in the back of your head saying "blah blah blah blah blah..." Seriously, maybe 80% of my company's website is this BS "happy talk" which has no relevant content or beef to helping our customers or selling our own products. Happy talk is superfluous babble that wastes time and confuses and frustrates web users. All in all, I think this is a great read (I think it took me about 2 1/2 hours) I recommend it for web designers and web project managers, as well as other individuals that have a large personal stake in a website. I am starting my own company with is heaviliy web-based, and I will be applying many of the topics in this book toward it. My ownly caveat is that this book is a bit brief - although the author appeared to have written it this way. I would have liked more information on navigation and examples on service-based industries where companies try to sell solutions to customers rather than physical products.
Rating: 
Summary: This One Will Keep You Up Late
Review: The first thing I thought when considering whether to purchase this book was, "Wow. Could it really be worth ... in soft-cover?" Did I buy it? Well, sure--otherwise I wouldn't be writing this review. And the thing that made me finally decide to purchase the book was the title, "Don't Make Me Think." In a world that values simplicity and ease of use, those are words to live by. Designers looking for some real nuts and bolts technical information probably won't get much from this book. Actually, tech talk is not what it's about. "Don't Make Me Think" is a friendly, accessible treatise on the principles of Web usability--how to keep users at your site longer by giving them the most uncomplicated experience possible. Will it tell you how to implement your latest Flash creation? Nah. But it will help you discover ways to make your site more "user friendly," and usability is an important issue in building a site that attracts--and most of all, KEEPS--visitors. I got two chapters into this book and my head was already churning with ways to make my site easier to use and understand, and therefore more "sticky." By chapter three, I'd begun a total redesign of my website, and continued working until 3 a.m. (My advice? Don't read this book unless you're willing to stay up late.) A month later, when all was said and done, I had built a better site and my stats showed that instead of the average 6 pages viewed per visit I had been experiencing previously, the site was now averaging double that with 12. All in all, not bad results for a ... investment. "Don't Make Me Think" does wander off on a few tangents that have more to do with design and less to do with usability or the psychology behind what makes visitors keep on clickin', and the fact that it wanders from its chosen topic makes it slightly less useful. Still, if finding ways to improve your website visitor's experience is one of your goals, you'll enjoy "Don't Make Me Think."
Rating:
Summary: Web Designers, Read This
Review: "Don't Make Me Think" is incredibly clear, concise, and helpful - as well as surprisingly enjoyable. Every web designer or developer should read it and take its message to heart. I develop web sites at an e-business solutions provider, and these are the kind of issues I tackle every day. I am reading three industry-related books and ten industry-related magazines on any given day, and I managed to make it through this book in lightning speed. Kudos to author and editors for creating such an easy-to-swallow dose of usability advice, and for adding excellent sprinkles on top in the form of good-natured humor throughout and a resource section at the end. Web design is a young field, and because of that, many people who design web sites today have no formal training in web or interface design. A background in print design or technology is a great start, but not sufficient when it comes to creating a usable web site. It is crucial to take usability into account when creating a site that you want people to interact with - ESPECIALLY when you want people to buy something from your site. This book provides a terrific outline of usability issues, as well as a look into usability testing, in a very accessible and encouraging manner. Anyone involved in designing or developing web sites can benefit from it. Especially if you have never conducted a usability test and don't realize how average people (ie, non-web-savvies) interact with a web site - this book will open your eyes to some vital information which will help you create better, more usable sites.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be confused by this "harcover" edition
Review: I'm adding this because I know some people may be a little confused to see a hardcover edition of this book (which I wrote). This is actually what's called a "prebound book"--a paperback that has had a hardcover binding pasted on to it. (They're basically made for libraries so they won't wear out as quickly.) On the inside, this is exactly the same as the paperback because inside it *is* the paperback. You probably only want this edition if you own a library.
Rating:
Summary: Ingeniously Obvious
Review: I have been either programming or designing functionality for websites for almost 10 years. This book was the wake up call I needed. I can honestly say it has completely changed the way I think about what I do. While most of what is in the book does seem obvious, sometimes it takes having someone tell you these things to realize their importance. I like this book so much I recommended it to everyone I work with and picked up all of the books in the recommended further reading section. All I can say is read this book if you are a designer, developer, or business analyst!
Rating:
Summary: Simple & worth to collect!
Review: I'll make it simple, like this book's title :)
1. GREAT BOOK! Worth to collect if you're someone involved in web design
2. Easy to read, both the language & the lay out
3. Good for professionals both amateurs So? What're you waiting for? Monika Tanu
www.monikatanu.com
Rating:
Summary: Easy Reading for a tight time scale
Review: I loved this book, it was simple to read, funny, and informative. Not only have I used it for my University degree, I've used the principles in my work too! Highly reccomended.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: If you are just starting out on web usability - this book is a great jumpstart. If you are only planning to buy one book on web usability, and don't know which one to get - get this. Whatever you do, get this book.
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