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Summary: After (so many) reviews...
Review: ..there's not much more to say but I will anyhow.
My confidence in my web design abilites have increased two fold. Not only can I now look at my own sites more objectively I can look at other sites too and learn more than I ever have before. While I was reading the book I was designing layouts for a web site and I went from no homepage to a clear, concise, no-nonsense homepage that truly serves a functional and good looking purpose.
I will reference this book for a very long time, probably until I have memorized it! I highly recommend this book for anyone involved in any aspect of web design, from the web designer to the CEO. Great find, must have!
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Summary: Truely amazing book!
Review: Definitely a must-have for anybody related to web design & development, from coders to CEOs. It's a lifesaver in the ocean of poorly developed websites. Developing websites for 4+ years myself, I've never seen that much of wisdom concentrated in a single book. Do me a favor and read it!
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Summary: I won't lend this book
Review: When I recommend this book to peers, they ask if they can borrow my copy. I tell them no - I'm not willing to be without it. It's that valuable.I respect an author that can take a complex, nebulous topic (like web usability) and distill his or her thinking into a single statement. Krug does it masterfully, and puts his statement on the cover: Dont Make Me Think. Now that I understand where he's coming from, I can read his book through that lens. Authors should be able to provide some broad context first, and then descend into detail. An author should say "my topic is about A, B and C. We'll explore many detailed examples within each, and I'll make plenty of recommendations. But at the end of the day, it's about A, B, and C." Those that don't provide the context end up writing books that are glorified laundry lists: "208 things to remember about my topic". I can't retain a list of 208 things, but I can remember A, B and C. Krug offers up a few sensible laws of usability and demonstrates their validity through carefully chosen examples. The book itself is a living example of interface usability. I recommend it even to people who have no interest in the web. It's that good. Own this book.
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Summary: Home run!
Review: Great job, Mr. Krug - I anxiously await your next book! It's a welcome relief after reading some downers. I find it ironic that authors for web usability seldom apply their observations to their books; this author avoids that trap. Pros: brief, to the point, and illustrated, fabulous use of humor.
Cons: none I can think of right now.
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Summary: Krug v. Nielsen: A Highly Subjective Review
Review: Jakob Nielsen: Impossible to remember how to spell his name. Steve Krug: Easy to remember. Nielsen: Usability in a thousand words or more. Krug: Usability in catch phrases and cute graphics. Nielsen: Great for quotes in bloated business presentations on why usability testing is important. Krug: Great for 'I get it, it all makes so much sense to me now' type reading. Nielsen: Testing, testing, testing! Krug: "Don't make me think! If you have room in your head for only one usability rule, make this the one." Nielsen: 432 pages, mostly text. Krug: 194 pages, lots of inline graphics. Nielsen: Loves Sun (not the star). Krug: Loves Amazon (not the jungle). Nielsen: Usability Guru writes books for future Gurus who have lots of time to read. Krug: "little known but highly respected usability consultant" writes books for people with little room in their brain and "short enough for you to read on a long plane ride." Thank you for reading my highly subjective and probably wildly inaccurate comparison. I whole-heartedly reccomend this book to anyone concerned with usability I tend to like books that present a single argument that's not necessarily revolutionary, but "sums it up" so well that you can easily apply the knowledge time and again. This book does that. I reccomend it to everyone at my job, especially new designers. I think Nielsen's great too. I own Designing Web Usability and refer to it all the time, however this book presented things in a simple straightforward way that's easy to get, so for the layman this book is perfect. For the professional, get both. Nielsen's book will certainly give you a lot more ammo for writing a report on why usability is important to your company. Also read: The Design of Everyday Things, Joel on Software, Information Architecture (the O'Reilly book).
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Summary: Great Book! Recommended as an intro to Usability Principles
Review: This is a great book. I assign it as a college level text for a Web Interface Design Class. My students actually enjoy reading this book, and derive an understanding of important usability principles from it. It presents this fascinating information in a very engaging style. I think this would be good for anyone who is associated with designing web pages. The principles are sound, and important. There are many web sites which have design/usability problems. If only they could read this book!
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Summary: Delightful clarity and distilled wisdom.
Review: Clearly the authors have taken their own advice to heart when writing this book. I almost hate to say this, they pointed out several mistakes that I'm currently doing on my own website. I've no doubt that their guidelines will make my customer's life easier.
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Summary: Common sense may mean "what you already know."
Review: I found this book way too basic, and I'm not a web designer by any stretch of the imagination. I think most of the principles found within can be understood simply through the process of using the web over a few years. For example, here's some breaking news from Krug's book: "_tabs_ are a good idea!" Gee, could that possibly be why every other major site uses them? Guess what else? _Amazon.com_ has a successful user interface! Don't buy this book. There is very little groundbreaking information here. Useit.com and the Yale web design guide, along with the O'Reilly book on information architecture, are far more useful for ideas on usability. I think this book stands as an interesting relic of the years 1998-2000, during which there were simply far too many people designing e-commerce sites, and so inevitably creating too many bad sites.
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Summary: Practical Usability
Review: A practical Web design usability guide, "Don't Make Me Think!" is based on empirical observation not exhaustive statistics. Steve Krug's five years of usability consulting and testing are distilled down to this thin yet gem-filled how-to. Krug observed how people actually use the Web rather than how we *think* they use it, gleaning key usability guidelines. Most folks can't afford a full-blown usability consult, but they can afford to buy a $35 book. This book shows you how to conduct your own usability tests on the cheap. Easy on the eyes, and full of Krug's trademark humor, this book is a classic. Highly recommended. From WebReference.com.
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Summary: You'll really read it, if someone doesn't steal it first!
Review: Some books are promising and will probably be of great value, if you can only get around to reading them.
This book draws you in, and entertains you while you learn A LOT.
And I hate to say this: it makes you think. In a good way, though! My friend took it to work at her web design firm, and it kept disappearing off her desk.
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